Email vs Push: Who Really Gets the Conversion?
Email builds the trust. Push catches the moment. So which channel gets the credit for the conversion, and does it even matter?
In this episode of Email Talk, Elliot sits down with Stefanie Kaberidis, who has spent around 18 years in email and CRM. She fell into email by accident at an email marketing agency, then moved through the Berlin startup boom ("one person has to do the job of five") and into almost ten years in corporate CRM.
Steffi explains why push brings in more revenue at the conversion moment while email does the branding and trust work. Someone reads your email on the metro in the morning, talks it over with their partner that evening and buys straight from their wishlist. The email lost the conversion, but a push at lunch or in the evening adds a second chance. Her advice to email people who've just been handed push: take it, it's a gift.
They also get into how AI is changing testing. Instead of an A/B/C test to a million people where "you choose the least bad", AI can test hundreds of combinations of subject line, hero image, copy and CTA for each person, along with send time and frequency. Email has the richer data to learn from, because push gives you "140 characters and one image".
Then hiring in the AI era (take-home case studies don't work when candidates "just bring you Claude's case study"), why Steffi now hires for mindset, the Berlin CRM scene and her women's breakfast round table, and how she went from workaholic to "you can have a career and you can have a life".
In this episode:
In this episode of Email Talk, Elliot sits down with Stefanie Kaberidis, who has spent around 18 years in email and CRM. She fell into email by accident at an email marketing agency, then moved through the Berlin startup boom ("one person has to do the job of five") and into almost ten years in corporate CRM.
Steffi explains why push brings in more revenue at the conversion moment while email does the branding and trust work. Someone reads your email on the metro in the morning, talks it over with their partner that evening and buys straight from their wishlist. The email lost the conversion, but a push at lunch or in the evening adds a second chance. Her advice to email people who've just been handed push: take it, it's a gift.
They also get into how AI is changing testing. Instead of an A/B/C test to a million people where "you choose the least bad", AI can test hundreds of combinations of subject line, hero image, copy and CTA for each person, along with send time and frequency. Email has the richer data to learn from, because push gives you "140 characters and one image".
Then hiring in the AI era (take-home case studies don't work when candidates "just bring you Claude's case study"), why Steffi now hires for mindset, the Berlin CRM scene and her women's breakfast round table, and how she went from workaholic to "you can have a career and you can have a life".
In this episode:
- From marketing generalist to 18 years in email
- Agency, startup, corporate: what each one teaches you
- Email vs push: branding and trust vs the conversion moment
- Why push opt-ins have no preference centre
- Why email data matters more for AI than push data
- The golden rule for email people taking on push
- Attribution across devices and channels
- AI and the end of the old A/B test
- Hiring when every candidate has Claude
- Hiring for mindset, and admitting "I don't know"
- The CRM scene in Berlin
- Career, burnout and having a life
If you run email or CRM at a brand, in Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe, Klaviyo or any other ESP, and you've just been handed push, SMS or in-app as well, this episode will help you get those channels working together.
Which channel gets the credit in your team, email or push? Tell us in the comments.
Subscribe for new episodes on email marketing, AI, CRM and email design systems.
Which channel gets the credit in your team, email or push? Tell us in the comments.
Subscribe for new episodes on email marketing, AI, CRM and email design systems.
Stefanie Kaberidis — Head of CRM
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanie-kaberidis-54235170/
Elliot Ross — Founder, ActionRocket; co-founder, Taxi for Email
https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamelliot/
EmailShepherd — the agentic email creation platform to do what used to take days in just minutes:
https://www.emailshepherd.com/
ActionRocket — the independent CRM creative agency:
https://www.actionrocket.co/