Interview With A TAM

Tall tales spread about our Technical Account Managers around the office. Some say they never sleep nor eat, and others whisper of ungodly amounts of coffee consumed. So, who are they? Are our TAMs that mysterious?

Not really. But I wanted to sit down and talk with a few of them about what they do to give you a more in-depth look into Mailgun’s Deliverability services. Two of our TAMs, Cameron Henry and Chris Farmer, are going to tell you their story – all of it.  

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Cameron is Brad Pitt, and Chris is Tom Cruise. TAM Manager Cody Jobson is Kirsten Dunst. He wanted to be a silent, omnipresent being during the interview (sort of like Kirsten Dunst).

What’s your day like?

Cameron: Depends on the day, to be honest! A lot of it is correspondence with our clients.

Chris: Yeah, I’d say that’s how a lot of us start our day. We want to be sure we didn’t miss anything while we were away and start checking in.

Cameron: We also do a lot of monitoring and checking of trends. We want to stay ahead of the game and check on our accounts to see their health overall. Another thing we’ll look at is blocklists to monitor for different customers and IPs for removal.

Chris:  Trend checking and monitoring aren’t limited to just customer health though, we also like to watch for trends in deliverability and the industry overall. Keeps us sharp and lets us adjust best practices for customers.

What’s the one question you hear the most?

Cameron: I’d say it’s “what would you recommend?” While we do manage accounts, we’re mostly a deliverability consultant. That feels a little broad, but it’s true.

Chris: I agree. That question follows most of the initial questions we get from customers, and we’re there to give advice.

Is there something you wish clients knew more about?

Cameron: List Hygiene. It’s easy to look over list hygiene when you have a huge mailing list, but those lists have a significant effect on your overall reputation. Sometimes that means having a tough conversation about hitting the reset button and scrubbing your list to get the results you’re looking for, but it’s one that sometimes has to happen.

If list hygiene is something that’s underestimated, what’s overestimated by clients?

Chris: Sending frequency and volume. A lot of times if a mailing list isn’t engaging with the emails a client is sending, they try to increase the frequency of the emails to reach them more. That can have the opposite effect on your deliverability a lot of the time.

Cameron: Yeah. In those cases, you want to reduce sending a little bit to give your emails some “air to breathe” so to speak. It’s easy to think that sending more gets more eyes on your emails, but that’s more work for the client and you’re less likely to get more engagements.

Okay, last question! Why would businesses need a TAM?

Chris: If you have deliverability problems, we can help. That’s the biggest issue we help continually solve with our clients. We’re their point of contact at Mailgun and we hardly ever change or move clients around to other TAMs. It’s kind of like we’re an extension of their team.

Cameron: Yeah, we’re the email problem solvers. We troubleshoot different problems, get to know your sending practices and company, and act as your advocate for feature requests during the development cycle. We’re not exactly for every Mailgun user, but if you want someone who’s going to understand and help you reach your goals for email, TAMs are the answer.

Conclusion

See? They’re not that terrifying. Well, they are in this A+ photoshop piece, but that’s beside the point.

Our Deliverability Service is a big leap for some businesses, but it doesn’t have to be daunting. If you want to learn more, talk to us! You won’t meet Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, but our team will get into the finer details of the service and answer any questions you have.