How to Make Email Marketing Suck Less
Part Two
We live in a world where people are interacting with email more than ever, where an email address is often the anchor of our customers’ digital identity, when marketers report that email is still one of the most valuable channels, and yet brands continue to destroy the channel campaign after campaign.
It’s time to stop that trend.
Over the last year, I was fortunate to spend time on the road talking with marketers about why email marketing sucks and how we can make it better. 30,000+ views later, and it’s time to put this baby on the shelf. Rather than let it collect dust, see below.
You’ll find the slides, along with how I presented them pretty much verbatim. And, don’t worry, I saved you from the introductory slides because we all know how painful those can be.
In part two of six, we cover what happened to email while we (marketers) were all focused on other channels.
Part Two: While We Were Sleeping On Facebook and Twitter, A Lot Changed
Yes, the devices that subscribers read email on changed, the industry and media turned on us, and consumers moved to other channels.
People stopped reading a lot of email on desktop and shifted their time to mobile, and we largely missed the boat on designing emails that worked with a screen this big (you’ll have to imagine me holding my iPhone) and with thumbs and fingers rather than a keyboard and mouse.
People started reading email all the time and everywhere — including while they are on the toilet. But, we somehow stopped thinking about context and kept sending our emails at those tried and true times.
And, the internet services providers (ISPs) such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo started creating easy ways to put our terrible, unsolicited campaigns in places where consumers didn’t need to be bothered by them.
And, the ISPs made it easier than ever to not only drop your campaign, but also give you the middle finger.
Take for example Gmail’s Unsubscribe and Report Spam feature which gives people just two clicks to give you said middle finger without ever having to hit your tinsey, winsey, little unsubscribe link.
If you needed a point of why all this damage we are doing matters, then take a look at this graphic.
Here’s how emails are delivered.
Step 1. You press send. That email passes through the internet and hits an inbound mail server.
Step 2. In the old days, that mail server would look for a couple things including your Sender ID Framework and Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF and Sender ID records are lists of IP addresses that are allowed to send email from your domain.
These lists tell the server that the email from your domain is really from you and help protect your brand by reducing the chance that your email is mistaken for spam. This still happens today, so it’s important you make sure that your SPF and Sender ID records are correct.
Moving on to Step 3.
If the SPF and Sender ID all check out, your email is authenticated. Now, here’s where things have changed over the last few years.
The ISPs have layered your reputation data into the deliverability equation. What is reputation data? It’s engagement data and the debate about what the ISPs look it is largely over.
They look at authentication (are you authenticated?), infrastructure (re you using a reputable email service provider ESP?), and are you actively managing your feedback loop (are you managing spam complaints effectively?).
More specifically, the ISPs look at things like:
- Opens — less relevant metric because images downloaded by default in certain email clients, but ISPs still track it
- Replies — replying to a message is a super-strong signal of engagement. So, why are we all using no-reply@? Baffling, I tell you.
- Moves — to junk = strong, negative signal. If your AOL subscribers do this two times, you’re in the spam folder for pretty much life.
- Mark Not As Junk — strong, positive signal that the email should not be considered spam. AOL says this is enough of a signal to “reset” the previous behavior.
- Delete without open — a quick glance at the sender/subject: a somewhat negative signal. So, your from name and subject lines matter.
- Move to folder — if people are moving messages around, it means they care about them. This is strong positive signal.
Based on those types of signals, the ISP makes a decision as to where to put your email — Inbox, junk, spam, or block it all together. These filtering activities happen at the individual subscriber level and NOT at the campaign level.
Question: Did you just ask yourself, “Why are we tracking aggregate, campaign-based metrics?” If you did, give yourself a slow clap.
This is why email should be about people, not campaigns.
You make email for people, you win.
If all this wasn’t enough, the ISPs have recently began redefining what the Inbox looks and feels like.
Starting with things like Gmail’s tabs, a feature that moves promotional emails out of people’s Inboxes.
And, all this makes sense, right? Give subscribers what they care about most and move stuff that they don’t away from their attention.
This redefining has continued with ISPs asking themselves what does the future of the Inbox look like.
Gmail has already started to show off what the answer to that question might be with their Inbox by Gmail app.
The app was designed to take everything Gmail learned over the last 10+ years and help people get things done more efficiently inside their inbox. Features like Bundles pull together similar types of emails such as financial or travel related and place them together rather than one-by-one.
Email marketers are slowly losing our real estate in the Inbox.
Along with the ISPs, the media turned on us too.
Look at any major industry or business publication and you’ll find at least one “email is dead” article.
So, why does the media think we are a dying breed?
My friend Chris Sietsema (@sietsema) sums it up well with five key reasons.
- Killed by spam. Sure, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot on this one.
- Replaced by social media. Total BS. The two channels compliment each other in so many clutch ways. More on that later…
- Not relevant for younger audiences. This is a generalization. Sure, kids are on Snapchat and Instagram. Ask those same audiences when they get a job.
- Ineffective for retailers. Sure because most retailers do email terribly, which is mind-boggling because the ones that do it well reap the benefits.
- Not ideal for team communication. 100%, wholeheartedly agree. Email sucks for team communication. It buries organizations most important IP — their people’s knowledge — in an Exchange serve. Slack and other tools are certainly redefining how team’s communicate, but it certainly doesn’t mean that email doesn’t have a role in a corporate environment.
So, the media certainly has some points, but others simply don’t hold up.
Side note: If you want solid email knowledge delivered once-a-month, sign up for Chris’ email about — well — email. It’s called (go figure) The Email Email, and you can sign up for it at theemailemail.com.
And, governments are finally waking up to our woeful ways too.
Canada just recently passed CASL or the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation. It is by far the toughest spam legislation in the world.
Whereas our CAN-SPAM doesn’t define explicit consent, organizations sending commercial messages in Canada (emails, texts, push notifications) need explicit consent from subscribers — either orally or in writing.
Organizations that don’t comply risk serious penalties, including criminal charges, civil charges, personal liability for company officers and directors, and penalties up to $10 million.
If you want to read more about CASL, Deloitte has a whole post on the topic.
All that said, I don’t think you’ll ever see this come to the United States. Europe, maybe, but the U.S. email lobby simply yields too much of a big sword and, in my opinion, legislators should be focusing on bigger problems.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to check out all six parts of the series.
Part One: Why Does Email Suck?
Part Two: While We Were Sleeping On Facebook and Twitter, A Lot Changed
Part Three: But, Email Marketing Isn’t Going Away
Part Four: Sales and Marketing Continue to Stumble
