By: Alex Gray
“Email year after year after year after year has a 38 to one ROI for dollars spent on marketing dollars,” said Perry Sheraw, Managing Partner of Duma Marketing, on DissedMedia: A Startup Story with host Ben Olmos. “It is always in study after study, the leading closer last touch attribution channel for companies consistently across all verticals.”
For more than two decades, Perry has leveraged email as a reliable source of revenue over the years. On the show, she traced an unusual path from print journalism to marketing automation, explained why email still closes deals, and shared how she sees AI helping teams work smarter.
From Newsrooms to Marketing Automation
Perry started far from martech. “I started in print journalism,” she said. “I was a literature major and I wrote a story in the school newspaper in college… I spent several years at the Cincinnati Inquirer and during college I actually worked for the Lexington Herald Leader in Kentucky as a night police reporter.”
Life then pulled her south. “I’ve lived on St. Croix for 25 years and built a career from here,” she said. A corporate role followed, and a core insight clicked.
“We had something called Sage SalesLogix at the time, and that was kind of a digital Rolodex on steroids,” she said. “I ended up building that into something that integrated with our email deployment system. So I kind of built a predecessor mini HubSpot type tool.”
Her bet on email came early. “I can remember saying, I really think this email thing’s going to stick.”
Why Email Still Closes Deals
Perry sees email as a reliable finisher. “I view email as the closer,” she explained. Social and ads help discovery. Email secures decisions and preserves momentum when budgets or algorithms shift.
The basics still matter. Capture addresses everywhere you meet buyers. “If you are going to a trade show, if you are going to do any kind of advertising, you need to be extremely certain that you are open for business when it comes to email,” she said.
She also shared data-backed plays. Abandoned cart flows remain essential. “We’ve tested across multiple companies… adding a fourth abandoned cart pretty much doubles the revenue of the third,” she said.
Finding a Helpful Cadence
Many owners fear being a nuisance. Perry’s rule is simple. “First of all, your content should always come from a place of being helpful,” she said.
Start small and respond. “Get one welcome email out there,” she said. “If you capture an email, there should be a response. It’s part of the conversation, it’s expected.” For smaller brands, spacing works. “A casual cadence of seven to ten days between touch points for a smaller scale business is totally expected and not annoying.”
She also recommends quick wins like resend logic. Clone the message, adjust the preheader and subject line, and send to non-openers. Small tweaks can lift total clicks without overwhelming the list.
AI: Empowering, with Caveats
Perry sees AI as an extension of the work she has done for years. “I feel like doing marketing automation since the early 2000s, I’ve been participating in the evolution of AI since then,” she said. “Whether it was send-time optimization… or inserting dynamic content based on past behaviors.”
She likes how AI speeds research and helps smaller teams segment better. One concern remains. “What scares me about AI honestly is just that it’s going to evolve into search again and it’s going to be all paid content,” she said.
The craft still matters. “You have to commit to owning what you create from the tool,” she said. “If you’re not editing it and you’re not learning the skills you need to be a good editor, then you’re short changing yourself.”
Building Smarter Customer Journeys
Through Duma Marketing, Perry supports e-commerce, B2B, and medical device teams. Partnerships run long. “Our whole business is retention,” she said. From crime desks in Kentucky to CRM builds and deliverability fixes, Perry has kept one throughline: clear, respectful communication. The channels change. The discipline does not.
Disclaimer: The statistics and claims mentioned in this article, are based on industry studies and may vary depending on the specific context and business model. Results are not guaranteed and can differ for individual companies. The information provided should not be considered as financial or investment advice.
