Abstract
- New email rules arrive. New email regulations will make the unsubscribe process easier for consumers.
- Marketers adapt. Change requires marketers to optimize not just volume but also engagement.
- Prioritize privacy. The focus shifts to consent and data privacy in email marketing strategies.
As consumers, this may be the day we've all been waiting for. New email rules are here!
Scroll to the bottom of an email, struggle to find the font 0.5 unsubscribe button, type in your reason for “breaking up,” or unsubscribe from a daily email only to find out you're still opted in. You can say goodbye to the tedious process of For weekly, biweekly, and monthly magazines.
As a consumer.
But as a marketer, the new email rules from both Google and Yahoo that go into effect in February 2024 mean something entirely different. Subscribers will now have an easier way to opt out of emails they no longer wish to receive.
While this move will further reduce spam (Google's AI protection system already blocks nearly 15 billion unsolicited emails every day!) and streamline and secure your inbox, marketers will must be responded to in ways that reduce short-term impacts and optimize long-term outcomes.
What impact will the new email rules have on marketers?
New email rules require bulk senders to easily unsubscribe with one click and keep spam complaint thresholds below 0.3%. Google specifies that the measure will affect senders who send more than 5,000 messages each day, but Yahoo doesn't specify volume requirements. Either way, failure to comply can cause potential damage to a sender's reputation and impact marketing and CX outcomes.
Prepare
Thanks to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and ISP anti-spam developments over the past few years, most reputable marketers are already prepared to incorporate aspects like respecting unsubscribes and email authentication. But marketers who haven't yet approached email from a customer engagement or value creation perspective will start to notice the number of contacts they can email to dwindle more rapidly than ever before, says CRM platform said Chip House, Insightly's CMO.
Positive impact in the long run
The September 2021 email privacy updates made “open rate” a vanity metric, which was already a big change for marketers, says senior email and lifecycle marketer at messaging automation platform customer.io Naomi West added: New email rules may lead to more unsubscribes in the short term, but that doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is lost. Email is one of the many ways to contact customers and build relationships with them. That could simply mean customers prefer a different connection method, West suggested. However, in the long run, the new email rules will have a positive impact as inbox providers will be able to recognize legitimate (branded) senders and enforce deliverability against them.
what to prioritize
Colleen Groener, senior relationship marketing strategist at Merkle, a CX solutions provider, says that even legitimate senders are at risk when it comes to reactivation and recall campaigns targeting lapsed and inactive subscribers. It added that it could be affected. Inactive subscribers are more likely to mark emails as spam, so senders should prioritize campaigns for engaged subscribers in the short term and improve reactivation efforts over time. She says there is.
Next best step: minimize impact and optimize opportunity
Related article: 5 Biggest Changes in a Decade of Email Marketing Changes
New Email Rules: Tactical Steps
Take basic steps to become compliant with sender authentication
Minimize impact and optimize opportunities by implementing DNS (Domain Name System), SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Compliance), and DKIM (Domain Key Identified Mail) protocols to authenticate your email. Groener says you can quickly automate unsubscriptions with a trusted email provider. DMARC's presence in DNS gives you the power to isolate or deny impersonators. You can set this record to p=quarantine or p=reject, but you can also use p=none to monitor this bad habit, he suggests.
Related article: 7 Captivating Email Subject Lines
Double check your email template
All emails sent should include a user-friendly “unsubscribe” option in the header. This option will direct you to an unsubscribe URL in one click. This feature differs from the standard unsubscribe link in the footer, which may redirect subscribers to a confirmation or settings page within a brand's domain, Groener specifies. If your email service provider (ESP) doesn't include it by default, manually add it to all email templates used.
This update requires an implementation of RFC 8058 List-unsubscribe-post, which West says ESP must support. This header creates a personal unsubscribe that is displayed at the provider's discretion. Setting up a Google Postmaster account will also help you monitor your reputation on Google and optimize your email strategy with lots of great insights about your domain, IP health, and spam complaints from Gmail. she added.
Related article: Email marketers, decide not to worry about these three things…
Double check hygiene list
According to Groener, list hygiene will now be critical to keeping the complaint rate below 0.3%, which is required for high volume senders. Damaging a sender's reputation can be more harmful than an unsubscribe, so have a tactical plan of action to avoid ending up in the spam folder.
Related Article: Contributor Q&A with Chad S. White: Best Practices for Automated Marketing Emails
Revisit your audience segments
“Ultra segmentation pays off quickly, so consider segmenting your list even further to ensure your messages are as targeted and relevant as possible,” says House. states.
Related article: 5 ways to make your marketing emails more personal without personalizing them
change of strategy
Reevaluate your email strategy
Start now by critically evaluating your email strategy, including success criteria, says Tim Braz, CRO at first-party data provider Publishers Clearing House (PCH) Media. He sets engagement as the standard for keeping audience segments and email lists clean and fresh. Tara Pawlak, senior vice president of marketing at B2B revenue intelligence platform Revenue Grid, advises reviewing his current CRM strategy and email campaign plans with his marketing, product, customer success, and sales teams. I'll add. This is especially important in cross-functional teams.
Related article: Maximize email engagement and personalization using data and AI
Start optimizing for an engaged and addressable audience
The latest email changes, along with the retirement of cookies in 2024, will further reduce the addressable audience base. Phasing out third-party data means teams must find organic ways to capture audience attention. House recommends building a data-rich opt-in email list and first-party data that respects customer preferences to define user engagement strategies. AI is emerging as a valuable tool for marketers looking to implement effective personalization and segmentation strategies, he adds. This promises interesting use cases for a sales team or his GTM team, from content development to predictive analytics to automated high-precision segmentation based on behavior, engagement, and activity.
Empower your customers with a transparent and intuitive opt-in (or out) experience
Investing in a consent and preference management platform gives you the ability to continually engage with your audience who want to learn or change their preferences at their own pace. Customers can also “opt down” instead of choosing a universal opt-out.
West suggests reconsidering the expectations you set when collecting opt-ins from your customers. She added that consent-based communication built on strong zero-party data is key to driving engagement and trust. Email her marketers should focus on collecting usable data and the best time to collect data along the way. Instead of reasoning, you need to build relationships where you can ask your customers for the right data at the right time, and eliminate steps that force users to jump through hoops, she concluded.
Realign your communications strategy to align with your data privacy and security policies
Marketing strategies must be designed to keep pace with evolving privacy standards set by companies like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, including updates like iOS 15 and iOS 17, the elimination of cookies, and changes to authentication with Gmail and Yahoo. Groener says there is. In 2024, data security and privacy can no longer be siled and must be integrated into your marketing strategy.
change in mindset
Confidently changing your strategy requires a mindset shift that acknowledges the new reality of new email rules and prioritizes what's important. Consider the following:
Better to unsubscribe than to be marked as spam
Google (and other inbox providers) reward recipient engagement (opens, clicks, replies), House said. Being marked as spam hurts your credibility in the eyes of your email provider. Get used to the idea that your unsubscribe count is a healthy number. Instead, create an experience that encourages opt-in.
Prioritize value and quantity
Rather than creating valuable content to stay relevant, Braz suggests constantly sending out bulk emails to get attention. Get used to the idea of value over quantity. Focus on quality and depth of engagement rather than broad recipient demographics. There are no big numbers or vanity metrics in modern marketing.
Reframe problems as opportunities
Instead of getting defensive in the face of declining email volume, focus on building trust and value-driven relationships. In addition to all the best practices outlined above, think about omnichannel. Not all customers prefer email. Build a multichannel outreach strategy and give your customers a choice of email, mobile, social media, and other channels. This not only reduces dependence on a single channel, but also allows customers to choose the most appropriate means of communication for different types of interactions.
