Email marketers are losing ground in the battle for the inbox, thanks to technology changes that give mailbox providers more control over everything from message design to longevity.<\/p>\n
Marketers have never had 100% control over how an email message appears in an email client. Right now, I\u2019m tracking four changes that take away even more control over our messages and how our recipients can view and act on them. Some spring from applications of artificial intelligence, while user privacy and inbox decluttering and even climate change, are driving others.<\/p>\n
If you are still sending email like it\u2019s 1999 \u2014 or 2019 or 2021 \u2014 your email program could suffer one way or another until you update your practices.<\/p>\n
These changes aren\u2019t all negative. But each is a signal that we must once again understand what\u2019s happening, its implications and how to retool our strategies and programs to accommodate it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
4 inbox-altering email changes\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Right now, plenty is happening with email, and it does not have to do with generative AI. These are four trends I\u2019m tracking right now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Upsetting the Apple inbox cart again\u00a0<\/h3>\n
Apple\u2019s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature<\/a>, introduced in 2021, was the first shot across the inbox bow, as Apple sought to protect subscribers\u2019 privacy by masking when, where and even whether they opened an email message.<\/p>\n After the initial shock wore off, we email marketers figured out how to compensate for the loss of that data and got back to our regular work of communicating with the subscribers and customers who asked to receive our emails.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Three years later, Apple Intelligence<\/a> (yes, \u201cAI\u201d) is coming to the native Apple Mail client with the next system upgrade, iOS 18, on iPhone 15 and later. We need to pay attention to Apple Intelligence\u2019s \u201cPersonal Intelligence\u201d capability, which will use AI to sort messages into tabs, similar to Gmail\u2019s Tabs system.<\/p>\n As Apple says, \u201cOn-device categorization organizes and sorts incoming email into Primary for personal and time-sensitive emails, Transactions for confirmations and receipts, Updates for news and social notifications and Promotions for marketing emails and coupons. Mail also features a new digest view that pulls together all of the relevant emails from a business, allowing users to quickly scan for what\u2019s important in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not all bad as long as you\u2019re sending messages your subscribers requested, opened and acted on. It\u2019s not clear whether Personal Intelligence would reorder messages by sender or date inside each tab, so we will be watching to see how the new system plays out when it goes live later this year.<\/p>\n The specter of a marketing-focused Promotions tab has reignited worries that marketing emails will get lost if they aren\u2019t in the Primary tab or Priority view. We know it\u2019s not a major disadvantage in Gmail, so I\u2019ll categorize this as something to watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n One potentially positive development could be grouping messages by sender. As applied to promotional or marketing messages, it could turn up brand emails that subscribers retain for transactions or later action. (See No. 2 and 3 below for trends that could counter that benefit.)<\/p>\n Apple will introduce AI-produced content summaries for messages. This feature has been in Yahoo Mail\u2019s app for years but is inconsistent. Some email summaries are detailed, others just name the sender and some emails, especially image-based ones, have no summaries.<\/p>\n None of these changes will spell the death of email or affect their appearance or functions. They are reminders, however, that we will have even less control over the inbox and how our subscribers can access them. We will need to double down on message relevance and engagement to be confident subscribers can find them in the inbox.<\/p>\n The Email Expiration Date<\/a> project advocates automatically deleting old emails as a way to reduce the energy and data storage needed to retain them. Reducing email\u2019s carbon footprint is a noble goal, to be sure. But we have to be careful about how we use it.<\/p>\n Mass-deleting marketing emails, which have a bigger carbon footprint than, say, a \u201cWorks for me!\u201d reply confirming dinner with friends, sounds like a great idea, but we have to be careful about kill dates in email to make sure we don\u2019t upset one of email\u2019s great advantages.<\/p>\n That advantage is subscribers\u2019 tendency to retain emails from brands they trust or buy from regularly and search for them when they\u2019re in the market to purchase again.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many company email services delete emails regularly, regardless of engagement, unless the recipient changes a setting. However, email expiration dates could be a disaster for commercial senders if they become arbitrary limits imposed by mail transfer agents or mailbox providers. This doesn\u2019t appear to be the case, as project supporters say the process needs senders, ESPs and mailbox providers to work together to make it succeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, senders will need to think strategically when choosing \u201ckill-by\u201d dates so that they don\u2019t eliminate emails your customers are keeping deliberately and disrupt their long-term value.<\/p>\n Dig deeper: 3 keys for better email engagement in Gmail<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Do you need a push to start sending emails to new subscribers ASAP instead of whenever you feel like it? Here you go!<\/p>\n Google and Yahoo now require senders to include 30-day list-unsubscribe functions in email headers as a condition of inbox delivery. This disrupts the usual email relationship in three ways:<\/p>\n The list-unsubscribe header function isn\u2019t new. Senders have always been able to insert list-unsubscribe functions into their email headers to help people unsubscribe from messages instead of using the unsubscribe link or button down in the message. That\u2019s not bad if it encourages non-active subscribers to opt out instead of hitting the spam button or simply going silent.<\/p>\n A suggestion from my email colleague Chad S. White<\/a> (Oracle Digital Experience Agency) to widen the opt-out window prompt from 30 to 90 or 120 days could give you enough time to prove your value. The prompt would still appear in the email (in the inbox and header in Gmail; in the footer in Yahoo) but by then your subscribers might be less likely to act on it.<\/p>\n You might have noticed that some email client inboxes have a lot going on in them besides showing the sender name, subject line, preheader and date. Some emails now come with graphics, calls to action and even offer codes pulled from email content into the inbox.<\/p>\n Here are two emails that popped into my Gmail inbox recently. One shows the benign application of what Gmail calls \u201cautomatic extraction\u201d using annotation (see Gmail\u2019s explanation<\/a>) and Schema markup<\/a>, which you can use to add quick actions to inbox views. The other, not so much.<\/p>\n The SmarterTravel inbox image is the first image you see in the email. It relates directly to the subject line and message intent. It enriches the inbox view and could make recipients more interested in opening the message.<\/p>\n The promo code in the Swimsuits for All email comes after the preheader but is not part of it. It appears once in the email, embedded into an image whose alt text reads \u201cShop Now.\u201d There is no mention of the code. I had to look twice to find it in the email, although it shows up on the brand\u2019s website.<\/p>\n Was that done on purpose? Or did Gmail choose to extract and display that?<\/p>\n I agree with White, who is an especially outspoken opponent<\/a> of automated extraction because it rewrites emails for its own purposes, which might not reflect what the brand wanted the email to achieve. As he says, it begs the question: Who owns the preview content of the emails \u2014 the brand or the inbox provider?<\/p>\n The promo that appeared in the inbox could have been intended as a reward for customers who opened and clicked on the email. With the code pulled into the inbox, a customer could simply copy it and go right to the website, bypassing the email and taking it out of the engagement and attribution equations.<\/p>\n One bypassed email won\u2019t change anything. However, Gmail has a large reach, and Swimsuits for All is a major brand. So that\u2019s potentially thousands on thousands of lost interactions \u2014 clicks and opens that Gmail itself uses to measure engagement and which the brand uses to measure both engagement and campaign effectiveness. Yes, the brand gets the sale, but email takes yet another hit.<\/p>\n Dig deeper: New rules for bulk email senders from Google, Yahoo: What you need to know<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n None of the trends I\u2019ve listed here will bring about the death of email. Still, each one alters the landscape enough that marketers could find their email effectiveness slipping if they don\u2019t act.<\/p>\n Email senders have always known they can\u2019t control how email clients display messages. These changes are now affecting the inbox, where marketers once had control over the displayed information. Each of these trends chips away at that control.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that any of this is new or even unexpected. Email marketers have always had to contend with changes that seemed to be more designed to keep commercial messages out of the inbox, despite mailbox providers\u2019 claims that they were just doing things to satisfy their own customers and users.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whenever we email marketers face a roadblock, we complain about it and then roll up our sleeves and either figure out a workaround or collaborate with clever people to turn the problem into an advantage. It\u2019s time to do that again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff<\/a> and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em><\/p>\n2. Expiring emails<\/h3>\n
3. Unsubscribe prompts after 30 days<\/h3>\n
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![\"Gmail](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Gmail-automatic-extraction.jpg.webp?resize=928%2C742&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nDon\u2019t ignore the impact of seemingly minor changes<\/h2>\n