The Future Of Email Marketing In A World Of Data Privacy

Marketing Director at FST Logistics in Columbus, Ohio, a leading provider of temperature-controlled warehouse and transportation solutions.

As data privacy regulations evolve, marketing communications professionals have a responsibility to adapt their marketing strategies with new best practices as they arise. While there are certainly strategies that companies can adopt, new and unexpected changes can present challenges to even the most seasoned professionals. Historically, marketers have dealt with regulations lawmakers pass in different countries and have pivoted their strategies to comply with those legal changes. However, now marketers are faced with a new dilemma; what do we do when a technology manufacturer implements its own data privacy features outside of those that are already regulated? Well, that day is here, and most notably, it is impacting email marketing.

In June, Apple announced that it was launching new features to help its customers better control how their data is shared with companies. Apple’s new update to iOS centers on user privacy and data tracking. The Mail Privacy Protection feature will allow users to open emails without alerting the sender and avoid disclosing their IP addresses, which marketers usually need to track user data. When this was first announced, marketers scrambled to determine how this would impact our ability to track email open rates and click-through rates. Most email marketing platforms put a tracking “pixel” in emails users send. Previously, people who used Apple devices to read emails that were sent out by marketers were tracked via that pixel. With the new update, if the user turns that function off, there is concern that marketers will not be able to track whether that person opens or clicks through the email. Additionally, Hide My Email is a newer feature that Apple has rolled out. This function creates a randomized email address instead of a real one so that the user’s identity remains private. Simply put, this could impact a marketer’s ability to track email deliverability rates and user metrics. While there are email privacy applications for Android phones, there are currently no built-in email masking tools for the Android platform. Thus, the only segment of users this would impact would be Apple iOS users.

So, what are marketers to do because of these developments? First, while we may want to throw our hands up and quit, we should not stop marketing via email (or stop any type of marketing, for that matter). This simply means we must do a better job of engaging with our current prospects and customers. As marketers, we should reevaluate what our prospects and customers both want and need.

This starts with creating relevant content that is impactful and that converts. Traditional inbound marketing methodologies work by educating prospects (and customers) to help them make purchasing decisions. By incorporating inbound marketing tactics with meaningful content, those individuals who interact with a brand will likely continue to do so regardless of the communication channel. Now is an ideal time to consider the resources you have available on your teams, including thought leaders within the organization who are outside the marketing department, to develop content that resonates.

In addition to developing meaningful and engaging content, marketers should also start to segment their contact lists and establish existing baseline metrics. This will help digital marketing teams understand how email marketing is performing prior to the implementation of these new security features. Some email marketing tools will allow you to segment email lists out by device type, so if you can create a report of mobile versus desktop users, you can see if most of your email messages are being read on mobile platforms or desktop, and then you can further segment by Android or Apple iOS devices. This information will help you determine what your baseline metrics will look like in terms of email delivery and tracking. Keeping an eye on email opens and click-through rates before and after the changes will help your team account for a potential decline in metric availability in the months to come. Overall, your email marketing strategy should be to continue to push content that links to your website so it directs customers (and prospects) there, and then, in turn, we as marketers can track users and user behavior with back-end website analytics tools.

While the only constant in digital marketing is change, we have yet to see the overall impact of these changes on email marketing. As professionals, we should “block and tackle” the challenges before us that come with new regulations, and this is one of those challenges.