Author: Franz Malten Buemann

 

Email Marketing does not mean hundreds of unread messages. It means real profits. Every $1 marketers spent on EM provided $42 in return (Litmus). New Privacy Protection updates could drastically lower the OR of marketing emails and influence the profit of a company. The eCommerce industry must be aware of the upcoming changes and ready to adjust to a new, inevitable reality.

 

The steps taken by the major browser makers

 

A change is coming and no one can escape it. For Apple, privacy has always been one of the priorities, but their latest update raised a lot of uncertainty in the advertising and marketing world. Three sentences in respect of the iOS 15 aroused the most concerns. Apple claims that their new function:

 

hides your IP address,
hides your location,
hides if you open emails.

 

With their latest update, Apple introduces new features “Privacy Relay” and “Hide My Emails”. IOS users will be offered a “Protect Your Mail Activity” option, which means that now the company will block tracking pixels that are included in most marketing emails as a method of measuring open ratio, and mask IP address and location of a receiver. They have already introduced the capability to block third-party data to their Safari browser. Intelligent Tracking Prevention limits the trackability within the period of 24 hours after the customer’s first interaction with the website.  It is worth mentioning that Apple is not the first and probably not the last to make such changes.

 

Mozilla has been working on eliminating third-party cookies from Firefox for several years. In 2015, they had offered their users basic Tracking Protection, which turned into Enhanced Tracking Protection over the next four years. The function is a default feature that blocks third-party data, giving customers the ability to disable the blocking for a particular website. 

 

Google does not fall behind, however, they took a different approach. In the interest of advertisers and marketers the company is preparing their users for the entire phase-out of third-party data by the end of 2022. That means that Chome, Google’s browser, will completely transition to using only first-party and zero-party data. This move will affect customers significantly, since almost 70% of the global desktop internet users, and 39% of mobile users currently operate on Chrome (Statista).

 

Do you want to learn more about first-party and zero-party data? Check this article!

 

Email Marketing in light of changes

 

What distinguishes a good marketer is not the technology they use, but their ability to adapt to circumstances. In the light of upcoming changes, this ability will be put to the test. Here are some aspects to which marketers will have to adapt to:

 

lower OR, depleted by the majority of iOS users,
unconventional deliverability tracking to make sure that emails are received,
CTR (clickthrough rate) as a new way of measuring engagement,
limited segmentation, since engagement and location of users will not be shown,
statistics such as ‘last open date’ won’t be accurate,
limitations on A/B tests,
deleting inactive subscribers will be more challenging.

 

The reason behind third-party cookies death

 

The entire eCommerce industry is probably wonderingif such a transition is necessary. Whether anyone agrees with the occuring changes, or not, that is apparently what customers want. People appreciate personalization, but they are worried about their privacy. They do not feel comfortable with the way their data is shared and distributed, and they demand a choice. Consequently, we can observe an increase in data privacy laws, to which the limitation of third-party data is a direct response. Some companies offer permission-based options, and others block it entirely. However, the purpose of all these steps is to ultimately eliminate third-party data.

 

What does it mean for eCommerce

 

As we can already assume, the steps made by the major browser makers also mean changes for eCommerce. To adjust to the new reality and be fully prepared for the future, advertisers and marketers need to be aware of:

 

limitations – that concerns mainly businesses that base on Email Marketing, since they might experience harder acquisition of new clients. Difficulties in performing effective A/B tests might be also noticed,

loyal base – as the occuring changes mean a switch from traditional to subscription-based marketing, marketers will be able to mainly reach their already existing loyal base,

CDP database – to target a client directly a CDP (Customer Data Platform) database collects first-party and zero-party data about them, namely the date of the latest interaction, source of lead, engagement with other websites, etc.,

contextual advertising – in the light of recent updates this old and simple strategy might be worth considering again. Contextual advertising analyzes keywords of websites, compares them, and displays ads on those pages that are most similar to each other,

new solutions – the development of new technologies that will satisfy customers but also support marketers has been a work in progress for some time. Google’s The Privacy Sandbox, and LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution will collect real-time, consented data without using third-party data,

new goals – since a significant part of customers will now become untraceable it is crucial to adjust open-rate goals. Gathering the current data of OR from iOS users and determining new high, average, and low OR  might turn out to be a priority, 

leaving OR behind – instead of OR it is worth to focus on more accurate metrics, such as click rates, recency of sign up, or email engagement. Also, text messages shouldn’t be disregarded. This method of communication is incredibly engaging. 90% of marketing text messages get read within 3 minutes since they are delivered (Forbes). 

 

A brief summary

 

Nowadays, customers are demanding both personalization and privacy. As a consequence, the world’s largest companies are introducing privacy protection updates, preparing the world for the fact that we will soon completely forget about third-party data. Some have already taken these steps, while others are slowly making advertisers and marketers ready while looking for a solution that will not harm online advertising. It is crucial for the eCommerce industry to get acquainted with the changes and be ready to adjust to an upcoming future of online marketing.

As marketers, there’s a lot we have to do for the success of our companies. We have to make sure our websites are set up for an optimal customer experience and that they add to a great inbound marketing strategy. We have to create content, publish and distribute it, and come up with campaigns that…
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I am considering using an alias in my email sequence, so that mail is sent from [me@mail.mycooldomain.com](mailto:me@mail.domain.com) but replies go to [me@mycooldomain.com](mailto:me@mycooldomain.com). I wanted to do this to protect my email at mycooldomain.com, but also loop targets in if they are interested. All DNS records are properly set. Both the subdomain and domain use commercial relays. Is this convenience step a good idea or a bad idea? Does not getting replies hurt the sending address’s reputation too much down the road?
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