Gmail and Yahoo changes for email coming soon   In October, Gmail and Yahoo both announced changes that were coming in the new year to help further crack down on spammers and protect their customers from unwanted mail.  Email Marketers need to make sure they are prepared for what’s to come. Here are a few things to make sure of so you are ready when the change happens. Be fully authenticated DKIM, SPF and DMARC are the three forms of authentication to signal to the ISP that you are who you say you are, and to help prevent others from spoofing your emails and pretending to be you.   Confirm that you have all three setup to ensure you pass Gmail and Yahoo’s checks.  DMARC can be set to p=none but it is preferred to be set to p=reject. That will help block others from pretending to be you and sending. Spam Complaint Rates Keep spam complaint rates below 0.3%.  With Gmail that is reporting in Google Postmaster Tools. With Yahoo, that is done via the Yahoo Feedback loop, which identifies contacts who marked your email as spam. One-Click Unsubscribe Have a visible link for unsubscribes when sending marketing communication.  Also, an ISP can add a unsubscribe at the top your email.  Make sure that you are able to unsubscribe a contact within two days of clicking.   With CI360, we are able to automatically unsubscribe contacts that click on the ISP unsubscribe. Keep those three things in order and you will help ensure that you are in compliance with Gmail and Yahoo.  Gmail changes are going into effect February 2024  and Yahoo sometime in Q1. ... View more

IOS 15 came out in September and the Apple Mail Privacy rate adoption rate has slowly risen. As you can see from the graph below, at the end of November 2021, IOS 15 adoption finally passed those still on an earlier version of IOS. It has since peaked and leveled off. (To learn more about the Apple MPP change, read our initial communities post, Apple privacy changes coming and how it will affect Email Marketers.)       Apple privacy changes: defining success in the year ahead Open rates are being affected by those that have it turned on. It is still a little hard to determine what effects they are having, but as we head into 2022, marketers will need to be prepared for uncertain open rates and continue to look for new and better ways to determine success of their email campaigns.   Clicks will be more valuable, but to determine active and inactive subscribers, reliance on other marketing channels will be crucial. Consider how often a customer buys from you and how they interact with other your other marketing channels. If a contact has not been opening your emails or buying from you, then that is the sign of a true inactive. But if a contact has been opening, it could be an Apple prefetched open and you’d be wise to look at your other channels or buying history to see if they have been interacting with you elsewhere.   We are working with our team at Sparkpost to help segment out prefetched opens and have that number in our Task Insights. Hoping for Q1 of next year, so stay tuned. In the meantime, continue to focus on having quality, engaging content and working with only contacts that have opted in to receive your emails. Here’s to healthy and happy emailing in 2022!   ... View more

Apple announced recently a change coming with the IOS 15 update. This new mail privacy protection applies to anyone using the native Mail app on their iPhone and iPads. In the press release, Apple says the following: “In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.”    Apple Mail privacy change: why it’s a challenge for marketers    What does this mean for marketers? It means that every email will automatically be opened so marketers will have no way of knowing if the contact really opened the email or not. Opens was always a vanity metric, but a metric that, while not perfect, revealed if customers were seeing your message or not. Low open rates meant poor engagement and possible spam folder placement. Now it will undoubtedly be harder to know that. According to Litmus, 38% of email opens in June were from Apple iPhone. We got advice from two experts on how to adapt.      Apple Mail privacy change: two experts’ advice    Lauren Meyer, EVP at Socketlabs, says: “Mailbox providers are looking at both positive and negative actions taken by recipients to determine if your emails are wanted. While tracking open rates at the destination-level directionally over time can help email marketers proactively spot deliverability issues, be sure to monitor all of your metrics, including your unsubscribe and spam complaint rates to gain a more holistic view of your inbox placement.”    Kath Pay, of Holistic Email Marketing, says: “Click rate is now going to become your primary engagement metric to measure instead of opens or click-to-opens. You can, of course, still measure the open rate, taking into account the impact of this change. Ensure your analytics software is set up correctly to track and attribute email and begin to add clicks, web traffic/site visits, conversions, AOV (if applicable), etc. to your weekly/monthly reports, as well as the negative metrics such as bounces, unsubscribes and complaints. These metrics will measure not only the health of your campaigns but also your list.”    Apple Mail privacy change: prepare now    This is a BIG change, and you’ll need to be ready when it happens. Consider these steps:    Shore up your opt-in process, focus on quality not quantity.  Make sure you are providing value in your email to keep your contacts coming back.  Look at other metrics more closely and get used to the fact that open rates will be  less reliable.   Begin to focus your split testing on other things besides subject line. Try different buttons and copy text to see how they affect clicks and conversions.    Your deliverability specialist can work with you after the change to keep you updated on how the changes are affecting your results.     Peter Ansbacher Email Deliverability Specialist ... View more

In the 20.09 release, CI360 Engage: Email put out link track reporting capabilities.  This feature will allow you to better understand where your customers are clicking and allow you to make better marketing decisions and follow-up on that information.  This link track reporting is available at the task level.  When you are creating the content for the message, you can add the links labels. Here are some tips on to make the most of the link track reporting.   LABELING Labeling your links helps you easily identify which links your contacts are clicking on.  This can be especially helpful if you have multiple places in your email where you have the same link.   Let’s say you have a link to a big sale at the top of your email and then also want to highlight that sale again later in your email.  Label them “Big Sale! – Top” and “Big Sale! – Bottom”.  Put them both under the group label of “Big Sale” or “Promotions”.    Are more people clicking on the top link? Or near the bottom?     GROUPING Grouping allows you keep links together when looking over your results.  This can be especially helpful if you have a lot of links and want to group them in sections for easier tracking and follow-up.   For example, if you are a clothing company, you can have different group labels for men’s, women’s, and children’s clothes.   Or if you are a furniture company, label a group of links “Bedroom” and “Living Room” to segment and follow-up better based on what they are interested in.   TRIGGERED EVENTS The link tracking attributes have been added to our standard event processing, so you can do a triggered task based off of specific links clicked.   This is an exciting feature for our Engage: Email customers.  We will update the communities page with additional information and tips that we get. ... View more

    The world of Email Marketing is ever-changing.  To keep you informed of some of the latest advancements in email, we are using this post to highlight four of the technologies that either here or on the horizon to enhance your email marketing efforts.   Microsoft Business Profile (in Beta) Microsoft Business Profile helps you manage your brands’ presence across Microsoft products, starting with Outlook.  When you have an MBP setup: ·         Your emails will be displayed with verified icon ·         You will get a customizable business profile ·         More prominent placement for Coupons and promotions (coming in late 2019), which will be great for retailers. If you would like to join the BETA program, you can sign up here.     ----------------------------------------------------------------- BIMI BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification.  BiMi is a solution for having greater control over having your logo appear in the inbox beside your message header. It helps distinguish you in the inbox from fraudulent emailers and works across multiple mailboxes that use BiMi.  It is currently in OATH domains only (Yahoo, AOL, Verizon) but is growing in popularity. Gmail just announced that it will be participating in a BIMI pilot, so it is gaining.   For your logo to appear, you must have all three forms of authentication working (SPF, DKIM and DMARC).  And DMARC has to be set to P=Quarantine or P=reject To find out more about BiMI, click here.   Check back to this space for more information and consult your email deliverability expert to help answer any questions or to work to get this setup for your business. ... View more

          Now that you’ve signed up for SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Engage: Email, there are a couple of things you’ll want to keep in mind as you decide on your approach for implementing an opt-out process for your recipients. There are essentially two approaches that you may choose to take:   1. Use SAS Customer Intelligence 360’s native unsubscribe link in your emails   If a recipient receives one of your emails and decides they would like to unsubscribe from future mailings, upon click the user record within the Data Hub is updated and that contact email address will no longer be sent to.   2. Link off to your preference center   Email contact preference centers have become an Email Marketing best practice over the last several years. They allow your subscribers to self-select their segmentation and can help reduce unsubscribe rates. Using this option, you’d simply need to replace the default SAS Customer Intelligence 360 unsubscribe URL with your preference center URL. Keep in mind that this approach would require you to do the work of ensuring that any further emails aren’t sent to this recipient. This can simply be done by ensuring the contact is no longer included in any recipient list (customer table, transient file or injected events) that is sent or uploaded into SAS Customer Intelligence 360. Alternatively, you can periodically perform uploads into the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 data-hub contact preference table to add opt-out records for the email addresses they want to suppress. This second approach is probably the safest since it ensures that if the marketing user accidentally uploads a recipient who has opted out then the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 system will not send the email.   A couple of other things to keep in mind. The SAS Customer Intelligence 360 opt-out system is based on the email address rather than the identity. If an email address is shared by multiple identities, then none of those identities will receive email if the address becomes opted out in SAS Customer Intelligence 360. This is an additional protection that our system provides. Second, if you have a ‘Program ID’ as part of the send agent configuration, the suppression received is only for that ‘Program.’   Questions? Comments? Let’s start a conversation below. ... View more

  Global Compliance Updates from around the world   In an ever changing marketing world, it can be hard to keep up with all that is going on.  Today I wanted to let you in on a few updates to some privacy laws that are coming and also give an update on the Canadian Anti-Spam law.    CCPA While the Can Spam Act was created way back in 2003 for the United States, states are starting to begin to create their own laws and protections. The biggest one on the horizon is the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.   It places restrictions on data monetization business models, provides accommodations rights to access, deleting and porting of personal data, requires updating of privacy policies and will impose new penalties and liquidated damages.  This will apply to businesses but exempts non-profits.  It’s planned to go in to  effect in January 1 st 2020.  If you want to continue to monitor the progress and get more information, I recommend going here.   GDPR vs CCPA A lot of people are wondering  how the CCPA differs from GDPR.  The EEC (Email Experience Council) Thought Leader of the Year  , Matthew Vernhout, wrote a great article comparing the differences between the two. While they may seem similar, the two are vastly different in their scope of responsibilities of businesses and consumers, according to Matthew.      CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Law) If you are sending to contacts in Canada, CASL covers more than just email, targeting the most damaging and deceptive activities:  Fraud, Hacking, Harvesting, Malware, Privacy Invasion and spam.  The three key elements to CASL compliance are 1) Requesting Consent, 2) CEM requirements, and 3) Data and Documentation.  You will want to make sure that you have gotten consent to send customers CEMs (Commercial Electronic Messages) and have documented it   in case you need it. There are two types of consent: Explicit and Implied.  For implied consent, make sure you understand the expiration dates and work to get explicit consent or renewal of implied consent.   An important note:  A customer can unsubscribe from receiving CEMs, however, you can continue to send transactional messages under CASL.  You will need to be able to prove compliance if challenged so make sure to document as much as you can.  The burden of proof is on the sender.   Brazil General Data Protection Law The Brazil Data Protection law was created in 2018 and goes into effect in 2020. If you work with customers in Brazil, there is a great site that did a detailed analysis of the law and what to expect.  You can find it here.   Check back to this Communities  space for more updates like this!     ... View more

  When you are designing an email to be sent out, it is good to follow a checklist to make sure that you have your email looking good for sending through Engage: Email. Whether you use our content editor or our HTML editor, focusing on these email design basics can help you increase your likelihood that your email will be read by the recipient.   Subject line – the general rule of thumb is to keep the subject line between 40-50 characters.  With more customers viewing emails on a mobile device, the shorter the subject line the better it will look in the inbox preview.   Pre-Header Text – The pre-header shows up underneath the subject line and is the first line of text that contacts see when viewing an email.   Think of it as an extension of your subject line and have it tease what is in your email.  Keep it short, as only a certain amount of characters will show up in the inbox preview.    View in Browser and Unsubscribe links  - View in browser links are good to add to the top of your message and allows your contact to view your message online. You can also add that link (after sending) to your social media to promote your message.   Adding an extra unsubscribe link a top is also good IF you are concerned or have had issues with deliverability and complaints.  You are much better off having someone hit the unsubscribe button than the spam button!   Navigation Bar – Usually underneath your logo, it is good to limit your navigation bar to 4-5 links.  It can be overwhelming for a contact to see a lot of links. Be sure to test in mobile to make sure it looks good. Call to Action – What is the main action you want your contact to take?   Make it stand out! The CTA (call to action) should be near the top and easily clickable.   Make the button big and clear to plan for mobile and test different colors and CTA words to get optimum results.   In the next article, we’ll review the body and footer of your message as well as image and content tips.      ... View more

    Today, I wanted to talk about three of the top questions I get asked as a Deliverability Specialist.   What is Email Deliverability?   Some people confuse email delivery with Email Deliverability, so let’s start with understanding the difference between the two.                                                                          Email Delivery refers to whether an ISP accepts your email.  It is also referred to as “acceptance rate.”  Email Delivery measures if an email was accepted by the ISP (Internet Service Provider).  Your IP address being blocked by an ISP or sending to a bad email address (bounce) are two of the factors that can affect email delivery.  Email Deliverability is the next step after it is accepted by the ISP.  It is also referred to as inbox placement.  Does the message end up in the inbox or spam folder?   Email Deliverability is affected by three main factors:   Authentication, Reputation and Content. A focus on those three areas will boost your chances of reaching the inbox; look for future articles covering these in more detail, in CI Communities.   Why is it important to run a warm-up plan?   ISP’s want to prevent spam or malicious email from being sent to the recipient.  When you use a new IP address, you need to gain trust from the ISP’s, for them to allow your messages to be received by their recipients.   ‘IP Warm-up’ is the process of slowly building up send volumes, with ISP’s, to improve their trust in the IP address and you, as the sender.   You should be aware, even if you have a good sending reputation today, if you begin using a new IP address, the ISP’s will still need time to fully trust it.   Sending a large number of emails without warming up will set off “Whoa!” alarms with the ISP’s and can lead to your messages being blocked.   By setting and following a proper warmup plan, you can build-up your email volumes, whilst remaining inside each ISP’s ‘new IP’ limits.  So long as you get good responses from your recipients, you will soon build a reputation with each ISP.  Without this kind of positive reputation, blocks and other deliverability issues can occur, leading to problems that can take time to fix.  So, get started on the right foot with a new IP address and warm-up!   Can you guarantee Inbox Placement?   No one can guarantee inbox placement.  There are a lot of factors that go into whether you reach the inbox, so it is impossible for any ESP (Email Service Provider) to guarantee inbox placement. There are some email best practices that, at a minimum, can get you 95% of the way to the inbox, but even following all the best practices to a tee, can’t guarantee that extra 5%.  Focus on being properly authenticated, maintaining a good sending reputation, and providing quality content that engages your contacts, and you’ll be well on your way to reaching the inbox for most.   And if you start running into issues, work with a deliverability specialist to find ways to improve.   Peter  ... View more