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Q&A with Bryan Seltzer, EVP Activation, GM of ZX at Zeta Global

The future of marketing will be brought to us by – email.

Wait, what? Did we get that right? Email? Have we really come all this way with advertising technology to wind up back at email? 

According to Zeta’s Bryan Seltzer, that’s exactly what we’ve done. But make no mistake: This isn’t 2005’s email we’re talking about here. The future of customer acquisition will be heavily dependent on people’s inboxes, and that’s only because of all the strides forward we’ve taken in the larger data, identity, AI, and omnichannel addressability landscape. 

AdTechGod spoke with Seltzer to learn more. 

Let’s start with the basics: What makes email such a powerful tool for customer acquisition in today’s digital landscape?

Email is the unsung hero of prospecting—it’s the channel brands leverage to speak to their loyal customers, but don’t think about it for prospecting. It’s direct, personal, and most importantly, it’s trusted by consumers.

When you combine email with the power of the Zeta Identity Graph, it becomes a powerful tool to find new customers. With Zeta Direct—both a dedicated and contextual email offering—we’re not just showing up in the inbox, we’re showing up because a hand was raised to say “hey, I’d be interested in your product,” and the billions of signals we see ensure we’re not wasting a message. That’s when the magic (and conversion) happens.

Zeta claims email is “40x more effective for acquisition than social.” Can you unpack what’s behind that figure?

I always say social is like shouting into a crowded room, but email is a private conversation. With email, we’re not just showing up randomly—we’re arriving with a tailored purpose, at the right time, with a message the prospect actually wants. That 40x stat comes down to one thing: when you talk to the right person in the right moment—in a channel where you have their full attention—you get results.

At Zeta, we score audiences based on how they want to be spoken to. Some people lean into email, others respond better on social or CTV. We let the data lead, so you’re not just guessing. You’re showing up exactly where you’ll be seen and, most importantly, where the consumer will most likely engage.

You talk about reaching “purchase-ready customers” through email. How does Zeta identify these high-intent audiences? 

We don’t guess—we know. Zeta’s Data Cloud is packed with permissioned identities, and we layer that with real intent signals like browsing behavior, purchase history, and category interest. What I typically say to a brand is, “You know everything you want to know about your loyal customers but nothing you wish you knew about your prospects or your competitor's customer.”  We fill that gap. 

But what really helps to define a purchase-ready customer is our Leading Indicators product. It allows us to look back from the point of conversion and identify the exact signals that showed someone was gearing up to buy. That look-back view trains our AI to get even smarter over time to find the next prospect to convert. So, when we say someone’s in-market, we’re not making an educated guess—they’ve told us so. And Zeta Direct ensures we hit their inbox before the competition even knows they’re in the market.

Tell us more about how Zeta’s identity-based data and AI come into play. How are they used for targeting? 

Our graph gives brands access to 245+ million people who we understand deterministically—behavior, intent, and demographics—without making any assumptions. Think of our identity graph as the car, and AI as the GPS to designate how you get to where you want to go. 

Specific to targeting, we leverage AI to make sense of all the data that we have access to through propensity scoring, leading indicators, audience modeling, and intent. We’re not relying on cookies or guesswork—we’re tied to real people with persistent identifiers. That means we know where they’ve been, what they’re interested in, what they own, where they shopped, and where they’re headed next. Our AI uses that to drive smarter, faster decisions that lead to better forecasting and ultimately stronger results. It’s basically marketing with a sixth sense.

What role do real-time intent signals play in personalizing outreach and prioritizing prospects?

Intent signals are like digital breadcrumbs, allowing us to tailor outreach and messaging at the right moment to drive conversions. We follow the trail that ultimately leads to a conversion. But again, because of the identity graph, this is not a probabilistic approach. If someone’s researching mortgage calculators or reading up on new fiber, we know they’re heating up. We take those real-time behaviors and adjust messaging and targeting on the fly. That’s what Zeta Direct does best—we strike while the inbox is hot.

Beyond email, how does Zeta support an omnichannel experience? Are other formats like CTV or social media integrated into the strategy? 

Absolutely. Remember, the foundation of everything we do is our identity graph. What the Identity Graph allows us to do is to go beyond the “right person, in the right place, at the right time” mantra to ultimately “in the right way.” One of the most important things we learn through our propensity scoring is how prospects engage with advertising channels, digital or otherwise. This allows us to minimize waste, speaking to people only where they want to be spoken to. So yes, we have the ability of reaching consumers across every digital channel with precision targeting.

Measurement has always been a challenge in digital marketing. How does Zeta provide more precise tracking and attribution?

Attribution can be messy, but because we’re rooted in identity, we can track the full consumer journey, not just isolated touchpoints. That means we’re measuring impact from the first email open to the final purchase and beyond. No more black boxes. Just clear, deterministic attribution you can take straight to the CFO. Plus, we layer in incrementality testing and run acquisition-based programs that deliver immediate ROI. So, you’re not just proving your strategy works—you’re proving it works better in the now.

OK. So this isn’t just about email at all, is it? Very cool. Thanks for enlightening us.

About Zeta 

Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) is the AI Marketing Cloud that leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and trillions of consumer signals to make it easier for marketers to acquire, grow, and retain customers more efficiently. Through the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP), our vision is to make sophisticated marketing simple by unifying identity, intelligence, and omnichannel activation into a single platform – powered by one of the industry’s largest proprietary databases and AI. Our enterprise customers across multiple verticals are empowered to personalize experiences with consumers at an individual level across every channel, delivering better results for marketing programs. Zeta was founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley and is headquartered in New York City with offices around the world. 

To learn more, go to www.zetaglobal.com