\n<\/p>\n
I live in Texas, where the highway speed limits are more like minimums than maximums. Our interstates could pass for the Indianapolis 500 (AKA the \u201cIdiot 500\u201d here in Dallas). I contribute to this fast-moving culture because if you obey the law, you\u2019ll get run over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other day, I was cruising down the highway at traffic speed (at least 20 MPH over the posted limit), and I got pulled over. It occurred to me as I waited for the cop to run my license plate that I could end up going to jail. That\u2019s definitely not something that would make my mom proud of me.<\/p>\n
So when the officer came up to my car window, I didn\u2019t get mad or invent some lame excuse. Instead, I owned up to my speeding. He must have been feeling generous that day because he didn\u2019t even issue a warning. He told me to take it easy and let me go.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This incident makes me think about email (of course!). When I talk with clients who are having deliverability problems, especially when sending into Gmail, I call it being in Google Jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lots of things can put you on the wrong side of the law, whether it\u2019s violating an ISP rule or annoying your subscribers and customers.<\/p>\n
Why should you fear email jail? Because the sentences are tough, and the appeal process can be arbitrary. Revenue and customer engagement will suffer when you can\u2019t reach subscribers\u2019 inboxes. Getting sprung can be expensive and take your focus away from business as usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my quick list of 10 email fails (some misdemeanors, some felonies) that can put us in email jail and what to do to stay on the right side of the law. If you have one that\u2019s not on my list, follow me on Twitter\/X<\/a> and tweet it to me. I\u2019d love to see what you consider an offense punishable by email jail time.<\/p>\n Charges<\/strong>: Fraud, forced entry, coercion.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: 6 months to life on a blocklist (or several).<\/p>\n This is still one of the top email crimes since I entered the business 25 years ago. People still think email is easy. They say, \u201cLet\u2019s just buy a list and scale up fast.\u201d That is wrong on so many levels (and illegal in many countries) that it defies logic. When you buy a list, you could end up in email jail as soon as you push the \u201cSend\u201d button.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s make it personal. How do you feel when you get email from what is clearly a purchased list? Annoyed, no doubt. Everyone who buys a list does the same thing: They search to see if their names are on it. That tells you this is bad. From deliverability to engagement to ethics to ISP rules, there is nothing good about buying a list.\u00a0<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Public indecency.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: One month in email rehab to permanent shunning by unengaged customers and subsequent loss of revenue\/engagement.<\/p>\n I block images by default. I\u2019m not the only one who does, either. And I\u2019ve lost count of the emails, sent by top-notch teams from big-name brands, that are just blocks. The only text I can see is the preheader and the footer. They don\u2019t even have alt text on the image to tell you what the email is all about. How frustrating.<\/p>\n I understand the desire to create email works of art that will represent the brand better. But emails are not magazine ads. They\u2019re interactive by nature. Static images rob emails of their engagement potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n All-image emails give you no opportunity to market to customers with images blocked. You\u2019re committed to a life of batch-and-blast email, which is a crime, too (see next item).<\/p>\n Beyond that, production people say all-image emails are faster to put together and send. But in my perspective, that\u2019s being lazy. Setting up an email using modules that you rearrange, add in, or drop out for different segmentation and personalization is probably just as fast these days as coding an all-image email.<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Customer neglect.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: Customer ghosting, potentially for life.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no reason to rely solely on batch-and-blast marketing anymore. In a recent talk with marketers, I acknowledged that sometimes you do have to send the same message to all subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t have to be that way for your entire program. Even basic email sending platforms give you rudimentary tools to differentiate your messages if you have the data to drive them, even if you have an email staff of one. Even sending one personalized or segmented email for every 99 one-to-everyone messages you send is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n But note that I said it\u2019s a step. It\u2019s not a goal. When you live in a B&B world, you aren\u2019t using email to its full potential. Working toward differentiated messaging is a realistic expectation with today\u2019s technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most importantly, it\u2019s not what your customers want. The tried-and-true reasons customers either unsubscribe, report spam, or simply ghost your emails are lack of relevance and too many emails.\u00a0<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Operating without a license.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: 6 months or longer in deliverability prison.<\/p>\n Until Google and Yahoo (\u201cGoo-Hoo\u201d) mandated the use of DMARC among other authentication protocols in February 2024, authentication was hit or miss. It was viewed by everyone except deliverability experts as a best practice but not an urgent one.\u00a0<\/p>\n There were exceptions. My agency always prods our ESP migration clients to get it done during the process. But Goo-Hoo\u2019s mandate requires not only authentication but also that it be done correctly to pass email to the inbox. That included adding an extra step with DMARC.<\/p>\n Not authenticating your email or doing it poorly will almost always land you in email jail and hurt your inbox access. Complicating it are two common organizational problems: People don\u2019t monitor it regularly, nor do email marketers understand and own the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n You have to keep your eye on your deliverability and make sure it works right. Deliverability used to be a black box of magic. Marketers knew it was there but didn\u2019t understand how it worked. We don\u2019t have that luxury today. Email marketers must understand it and either own the process or have a stake in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Misappropriation of funds.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: Fine up to $1 million in lost revenue.<\/p>\n Triggered and transactional emails are email money trees. You set them up and run reports to see how much money they made for you overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n With the advent of dynamic personalization in emails based on purchases or adjacent products, it\u2019s (almost) criminal that people aren\u2019t using relevant product suggestions in purchase-confirmation emails.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although international email laws can vary on how much promotional content can go into a transactional email (if any), CAN-SPAM allows up to 20% of a transactional email to include promotional content as a secondary message.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having the presence of a suggested product in the transactional email promotional potential is a huge motivation to buy and a revenue source. Some companies make 50% of their email revenue on promotional content in transactional emails that represent only 4% of their overall email send volume. That\u2019s a lot of money for not a lot of emails.<\/p>\n This might be a misdemeanor in the eyes of the email law, but the sentence can be stiff: lower revenue now and loss of potential revenue.<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Incompetence; malfeasance; misappropriation of fund.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: Budget cutbacks, involuntary commitment to an email asylum.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n I am the \u201cstrategy over tactics\u201d guy all day long. (I\u2019m also a decent home chef but that\u2019s a column for another day.)<\/p>\n Strategy is the \u201cwhy\u201d of your email program. Tactics are the \u201chow.\u201d But people gravitate to tactics because they\u2019re easier than doing the heavy lifting that goes into creating an email strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Relying on tactics without having guidance from strategy is a jailable offense because you\u2019re running your program on sending email campaigns without regard for your customers, your users, your audience, your products, your brand, or your company.\u00a0<\/p>\n You don\u2019t know why your customers give a damn about your brand, products, or email. You have no guidance, plan, or path to success. You don\u2019t know whether the money you spend on shiny new email tools or questionable tactics is paying off in more subscribers or more revenue. That could lead to budget cutbacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n You also lack realistic goals. Every good company operates on goals. If you don\u2019t create and update your goals, you\u2019re just flying blind with email. What kind of relationship can you have with your customers if you don\u2019t know why they connect with you and don\u2019t have goals to improve that connection or a plan to achieve those goals?<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: False imprisonment, gross negligence.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: High acquisition costs to replace unsubscribed, unengaged, or spam-complaining subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n I am a big proponent of the opt-down. It lets you offer options for reducing frequency or updating email permissions and preferences to subscribers who are at the point of unsubscribing.<\/p>\n Opting down addresses the main reason why subscribers leave, as I mentioned in discussing batch-and-blast emailing: too many emails or too little relevance. If you don\u2019t offer them options for solving the problems, you are missing an opportunity to continue engaging with them.<\/p>\n You can find yourself in email jail if you don\u2019t give them the chance to change their preferences right when they\u2019re thinking about leaving. You\u2019re losing subscribers, and you have no insight into why they\u2019re leaving.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plus, you aren\u2019t giving them a way to solve for the reasons they want to unsub. That amounts to gross negligence considering how much time and company money you put into acquiring those customers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Conspiracy to defraud and tampering with evidence.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: 100% open rate for life.<\/p>\n Email isn\u2019t dead, but opens are. They\u2019ve always been unreliable given the vagaries of HTML and the way different email clients and subscriber settings manage them. But now, Apple\u2019s Mail Privacy Protection feature has made them even less directional than before.<\/p>\n Still, I talk all the time with marketers who can\u2019t understand why their open rates don\u2019t translate into email success.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, once again for everybody waiting to be booked on this email crime:\u00a0<\/p>\n The open rate is not a metric you can depend on to forecast anything. They are directional. Use them to indicate trends. What should you use instead? Clicks and downstream actions (purchase\/conversion, etc.) tied to your goals are more reliable metrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Obstruction.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: A new ESP you hate.<\/p>\n The tech landscape for ESPs has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. With the advent of AI and data availability, merging of ESPs, CRMs, and CDPs, it has become even more complex. It\u2019s not just about the ability to send messages but to consider all the options for cross-channel marketing and extending marketing beyond email. That heightened complexity makes the search for new technology even more daunting.<\/p>\n Yes, you can create requests for proposals and send them out yourself. However, creating a workable RFP that reflects your tech needs, data and employee resources, present situation, and growth potential can take you away from the business of getting email done.<\/p>\n And yes, you could have someone else in the company do it, like your procurement team. But that could also be a problem because they don\u2019t know about email or understand what factors are important beyond cost.<\/p>\n When running an RFP, an independent voice can guide you through the options, consider your pain points, and choose vendors who are most likely to help you solve them. You likely will recoup the money you spend on RFP management in the savings this team can negotiate for you in the sales process.<\/p>\n Charge<\/strong>: Inciting a riot.<\/p>\n Sentence<\/strong>: No less than 2 years\u2019 migration process with associated organizational chaos and loss of revenue.<\/p>\n Migrations can be messy. One reason is many companies don\u2019t go through major tech migrations often.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moving to a new ESP can be one of your most consequential actions.\u00a0 You aren\u2019t just unplugging from one platform and plugging into the new one. Migration includes many logistical processes, people, dependencies, and data. You need a plan so you understand what you\u2019re moving.\u00a0<\/p>\n Without it, you will create the riot that I mentioned above. It will be years of disruption. You could overlook essential information and processes. Everyone will be angry at the chaos and disorganization. The result? A riot that could take years to clean up.<\/p>\n Dig deeper: New rules for bulk email senders from Google, Yahoo: What you need to know<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Email jail is scary, and not just because of the people you encounter there. Unlike my traffic stop, you might not realize you\u2019re in jail until you suddenly notice your numbers are falling or you get a failure notice that your emails are on a blocklist or improperly authenticated.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s also so unnecessary! Every crime I listed here could be solved before the email cops close in and shut you down. But you have to want to stay out of jail. And sometimes you can end up there even when you do everything right.\u00a0<\/p>\n Use my list to check your program for potential crimes. Prioritize the ones you find and fix them. And if you need a good email lawyer, you know where to find me.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n1. Buying a list<\/h2>\n
2. All-image, no-text emails<\/h2>\n
3. Batch and blast<\/h2>\n
4. Poor\/no authentication<\/h2>\n
5. Omitting cross-selling and upselling in transactional messages<\/h2>\n
6. Running an email program without a strategy<\/h2>\n
7. No opt-down option to manage unsubscribes<\/h2>\n
8. Relying on the open rate as a success metric<\/h2>\n
9. Running an RFP without help<\/h2>\n
10. Migration to a new ESP without a blueprint<\/h2>\n
Wrapping up<\/h2>\n