As an email marketer, it can feel like bad things are always happening to us.
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection making it much more difficult to adhere to inbox providers own rules around emailing only engaged subscribers
- Apple’s Link Tracking Protection making conversion tracking harder for some senders
- Gmail’s policy of Automatic Extraction messing up our preview text
- Apple and Yahoo introducing AI summaries that replace our preview text and push down our body copy
- Gmail and Yahoo retiring email accounts
- Gmail and Yahoo introducing new deliverability requirements
- Apply joining Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft in adding tabs to their inbox interface
Not all of these things are bad, and some aren’t as bad as they appeared at first glance (although some are very awful). But all of those changes were implemented with little to no warning, and with zero consultation, forcing marketers to scramble to determine the potential impact on their programs and subscribers and then try to minimize that impact.
Of course, all of those big changes are on top of lots of smaller changes over the years—as well as things that haven’t changed, like inconsistent font support across inboxes, inconsistent code support across inboxes (including HTML, CSS, and AMP), inconsistent implementations of dark mode, inconsistent support of BIMI, inconsistent deliverability and feedback loops, and more.
Email marketers could be forgiven for looking at, say, the web and being jealous that website designers and developers have standards groups like the World Wide Web Consortium and that major changes in browser functionality are typically telegraphed well in advance, offer beta testing, and have release notes.
Why Can’t Email Marketing Be Like That?
Or could we do something to make email marketing like that? To answer that question, let’s ask some more pointed questions like…
Should we mobilize and lobby inbox providers?
Email marketers have never been very organized and, if anything, email marketing organizations have become weaker over the past decade. Plus, industry relations generally hasn’t been a focus of these organizations, as much as education and community (which is indeed valuable).
This trajectory seems unlikely to change for two reasons. First, most email services providers have evolved into digital marketing platforms that also address SMS, mobile push, browser push, and other digital marketing channels—and sometimes advertising channels, too.
And second, most of the largest digital marketing platforms have been acquired by much larger conglomerates. For example, Responsys is part of Oracle, ExactTarget part of Salesforce, and Mailchimp part of Intuit. Both of those changes seem to have dramatically diluted the willingness of companies to invest significant sums in email marketing trade groups.
But, you might say, accepting those limitations and that our voices might not be as loud as we’d like them to be, we could still lobby inbox providers. That’s true, but it begs the question…
Are inbox providers receptive?
The history here isn’t encouraging. Email marketers actually tried quite hard over several years to lobby Microsoft, trying to convince them to stop using Word as their email rendering engine and use a web browser like other inbox providers did. They ignored us for years. Then they acknowledged us… but mostly to mock us. Did those efforts eventually lead to positive changes at Microsoft many, many years later? It’s possible, but I’m skeptical.
Of course, that’s just one effort, but there are a few reasons to believe the dynamic hasn’t changed. First, email marketers aren’t the primary audience of these platforms. Consumers are. If anything, marketers are seen as a cost burden, since they don’t pay to support inbox providers and they send lots of messages that inbox providers have to store. Sure, marketers give email users more reasons to log in, but it’s an indirect benefit that we provide.
Second, like ESPs, all the major inbox providers are now part of conglomerates—and they’re typically a small part and getting smaller. That’s not to say the parent companies don’t care about their inbox platforms or that they’re not investing in them. They clearly are. But they invest with an eye on the larger portfolio.
That’s likely the central reason why Microsoft stuck with Word as its email-rendering engine for Outlook for so long. Using Word to compose and render emails aligned with their focus on business customers.
More recently, Apple likely implemented Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and Hide My Email mostly because it aligned with their overall pro-privacy brand positioning rather than in response to abuse in the email channel. App Tracking Transparency and the blocking of third-party cookies in Safari were clearly spurred by abuses by app providers and advertisers. MPP seems like it’s simply just consistent branding.
And third, the mailbox and inbox provider markets have become undeniably concentrated, with Gmail the dominant consumer mailbox provider, Apple the dominant consumer inbox provider, and Microsoft dominating corporate email services (although less so than in the past). A new major player—Amazon would be ideal—would definitely shake things up. That said, it probably wouldn’t lead to email marketers having more of a voice so much as it might give providers more pause before making sweeping changes.
All of That May Sound Defeatist.
But it’s just reality. And honestly, spending time and money and energy trying to convince inbox providers to help us create better subscriber experiences would be a distraction.
That’s because all of the not-so-great things inbox providers have done, plus all the not-so-great things they haven’t fixed, haven’t fundamentally changed the value of email marketing. Sure, it’s gotten harder, but email marketing is still…
- Consumers’ preferred channel for brand communications
- Relatively inexpensive, which helps fuel its high return on investment
- Able to deliver rich content and experiences
- Able to deliver highly targeted segmented and automated messages
- Quite measurable compared to other channels
- A great source of zero- and first-party data to use across channels, especially as third-party data becomes increasingly fraught
- Able to impact the full funnel, from awareness all the way down to conversation and evangelism
Instead of lobbying inbox providers, marketers would be far better off investing in creating the best possible email experiences for their customers and prospects—through personalization, segmentation, and automation improvements; better accessibility and inclusive design; greater omnichannel orchestration; and better data and data mobility, including systems like customer data platforms.
Inbox providers are going to continue to make frustrating changes, and email marketers are going to continue to scramble to adapt. That’s the way it’s always been, and probably the way it’s always going to be. While things could be better, let’s not lose sight of the fact that they’re still really awesome.
Photo by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash