I'm not a fan of the TV show “Survivor,” but let's just say it's pretty common in our house. Like most television shows, “Survivor” highlights the dark side of human existence.
Contestants on the show form alliances, but as the number of contestants dwindles, the allies are forced to turn against each other. Contestants watch each other's every move and try to identify weaknesses to exploit. Eventually, the people you depend on will vote to kick you off the island, and it's game over.
If you think “Survivor” is somehow an allegory for life itself, it's time to make new friends.
But what does this have to do with email marketing?
Google and Yahoo have introduced new restrictions for mass emailers starting February 1, 2024. We covered these limitations extensively in his MarTech and worked with expert contributors to uncover the impact these limitations have on marketers.
If you're an email marketer, you're essentially on an island with other contestants, just like a contestant on “Survivor.” Here's the cast of characters for Season 1 of “Email Island”:
email marketer
Now in its 25th year, email marketing remains an important channel for reaching customers and prospects. This is regularly used to communicate important information such as special offers, sale prices, and holiday hours for physical stores. Good email marketers understand important concepts like deliverability, audience, and the tools that bring it all together.
The new restrictions from Google and Yahoo are not a major problem for experienced email marketers. Authentication and one-click unsubscribe options aren't that hard to implement if they aren't already routine.
Strategies like segmentation and establishing preference centers help email marketers target messages and deliver more relevant messages to interested audiences.
email audience
They probably don't realize it, but the average person who reads email doesn't often have a problem with email marketers like the one I just described. They usually tolerate messages that are the right message at the wrong time. We do not tolerate a high volume of irrelevant or low-quality emails.
At Email Island, your email audience has a lot of influence. Reported spam rate (i.e., the number of times readers report your email as spam) is one of the factors that Google and Yahoo present. In this case, spam is in the eye of the beholder.
Learn more: Google Annotations: The secret weapon email marketers should use in 2024
email provider
Email marketers use their inbox (or[プロモーション]tab) depends on your email provider to retrieve your messages. But when your inbox becomes filled with unsolicited and irrelevant messages, the alignment between email marketers and email providers begins to break down.
Email apps represent data collectors and ad inventory, so inbox highlights are a revenue source for email providers. As viewers start ignoring their inboxes in favor of texts and in-app messages, companies like Google and Yahoo will be hit the hardest, meaning their revenue will take a direct hit.
sales team
Google and Yahoo's restrictions are applied at the domain level, allowing email marketers to adhere to all established rules while still receiving votes from their sales colleagues. Talk about internal work.
At the beginning of 2023, I was leading a demand generation team, and by combining sales engagement tools (think Salesloft and Outreach) with generative AI that was newly available to the masses, we were able to We instantly saw a 6x increase in cold outreach received. .
This is exactly the type of behavior that led to the mass mailing restrictions in the first place. On the bright side, perhaps this email will finally make sales and marketing alignment a reality. They have to play by the rules with each other.
How to win on Mail Island
To win on “Survivor,” contestants must appease some people, form alliances with others, and tolerate the rest. (Okay, maybe it's more like life than you first thought.)
Appease your email provider
This limit is extremely important for experienced email marketers, and it's clear what you need to do regarding authentication and one-click unsubscribe. Remember, this is all about money for your email provider, so appeasing them now isn't the end of the world. There's a very good chance there will be a season 2 and we'll have to deal with them again.
ally with your audience
ZeroBounce's 2024 Email Statistics Report reveals what your audience wants and doesn't want from your email marketing. The findings include:
- 47% of respondents said the key to getting noticed is a consistent history of relevant emails from the sender.
- 40% of consumers check their email for discounts on brands, and 66% prefer text messages.
- 78% of people report an email as spam simply because it “looks like spam.” This means senders should avoid spam-like behavior such as grammatical errors, sloppy design, and unauthorized email submissions.
Of course, you can also use your own audience data and conduct your own research to better understand your content. your What your audience wants from your emails.
Let's dig deeper: Why it's time to rethink your feedback emails and how to do it right
tolerate the sales team
This will be a challenge in a category like B2B SaaS, which is currently in a tough spot. Sales teams who are trying to meet quotas for closed businesses or outreach efforts will keep hitting the send button if it seems helpful. Fortunately, Google and Yahoo's bulk email requirements do not apply to Google Workspace accounts, only to personal email addresses. For example, if your B2B form requires a business email address, you have some leeway.
However, sending a cold email containing a personal email address to a Gmail address puts your organization's entire email strategy at risk. That doesn't help anyone. Partner with people who manage or can manage email domains, their authentication, and spam reporting. Keep an eye on Google Postmaster Tools to understand the health of your email outreach across your domains.
Please don't put your email address on the island in the first place.
What email marketing experts keep telling me about mass email limits is that they believe the best way to win is to never hit the email island in the first place (maintain (Not to mention the dignity with which they are treated).
If email is part of a well-designed marketing strategy that uses multiple channels and employs approaches such as segmentation and account-based marketing (ABM), you and your audience will be successful. Masu. Your email is no longer an isolated entity on its own, but now part of your strategy.
Users receive relevant and timely emails. And perhaps most importantly, your audience will receive fewer emails. According to the ZeroBounce report, 44% of people say the main reason they unsubscribe from email is because they receive too many emails from the same company.
If you're not on the ferry to Emer Island, you don't have to worry about being voted out.
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