Suzanna Chaplin on The Six Sells Podcast talking about the power of email.

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I spoke with Susanna Chaplin, co‑founder and CEO of ESP Connect, one of the UK’s largest email acquisition platforms. If you treat email purely as a direct response channel, you’re missing one of the most powerful media tools in the marketer’s toolkit.

Suzanna describes building the esbconnect business around one key insight: transparency in email programmatic, offering brands the visibility they expect in display, but in email.

What ESP Connect Offers?

• ESP Connect operates a 17-million-strong opt‑in email community, focused on performance acquisition. Key propositions:

• Mirroring CRM campaigns via Miramel, or building lookalike audiences.

• Powering cross‑channel journeys via email, social, display, and even postal.

• Highly granular targeting with 440+ user attributes (e.g. purchase intent, life-event indicators).

• Full data transparency and suppression logic to protect brand reputation and avoid customer fatigue.

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Rethinking Email as a Brand Channel - Email is often pigeonholed as transactional - but Suzanna argues it’s a powerful vessel for brand building:

• Inbox presence counts: sender and subject line exposure foster brand recognition.

• Emails live until deleted - readers can revisit, engage over time.

• Creative flexibility: from high‑impact visuals and GIFs to storytelling and interactive content.

• That gives you opportunities to build narrative and emotional resonance—without relying on cheap, last-minute promotions.

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Measurement: Beyond Opens & Clicks:

• Traditional email metrics are dated—especially post‑privacy changes. ESP Connect is working on:

• Attention-based studies in partnership with partners like Lumen Research.

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Attribution models: tracking deliver, open, click → conversion over time to compute influence scores.

• Ultimate goal: build attention metrics and brand uplift measurement into email performance tracking.

• Email as a Universal ID - Email serves as the identity spine. and esbconnect demonstrates:

• Cross-device matching via email + metadata (IP, browser, device).

• Audience activation: matched on platforms like Meta for lookalike or retargeting.

• Suppression files ensure you never target your existing customer base.

• Brands use their own media execution (via partners like IOTA) but rely on ESP for data and targeting logic.

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