As internet privacy continues to be an issue for consumers, technology platforms, and government regulators alike, the landscape of marketing is shifting. One of the most traditional yet contemporary approaches, email marketing, finds itself challenged with privacy-first efforts but also advantages with government and technology shifts surrounding how data is collected, stored, and utilized. This article explores these developments and regulations that affect marketers and how email campaigns should adjust going forward.
New Privacy Legislation Changes Email Marketing
New privacy laws such as GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California have changed the online marketing landscape by focusing more on a privacy-oriented society. These laws involve how and when customer information is obtained, processed, and kept, meaning legislators directly affect email marketers. For example, companies can no longer market to customers without their permission; any transaction must have a built-in opt-in or opt-out, and marketing emails must explain how a customer’s personal information will be legally utilized. As a result, marketers need to adopt careful email warm-up strategies to ensure their communications comply with privacy standards and achieve high deliverability. This shift in accountability makes regulators reassess how they acquire information and invest in comprehensive compliance efforts.
Less Third-Party Data Acquisition Attempts
With Google Chrome and Safari, major browsers, disabling third-party cookies, marketers lose a trusted method of tracking customers on multiple sites. This change affects email marketing campaigns that rely on comprehensive behavior tracking for segmentation purposes. Email marketers must adjust from having additional context from outside sources that help target campaigns to first-party information obtained through subscriptions and specific documentation regarding how customers engage with companies and their emails.
First-Party Data is the Way to Go
The enhanced development of a new Internet centered around more privacy-focused endeavors sets the tone for first-party data to become mainstream. Email marketers will rely on first-party data collected by customers through clear and open-ended actions taken to gather new information. Companies must genuinely engage their subscribers through interesting material to join and remain engaged or give information in the short term. Companies must be clear about how they intend to use such information from the get-go. This proactive stance with genuine first-party data will allow email marketers to continue personalizing without fear of overstepping boundaries or expectations.
Email Analytics That Respect Privacy Will Emerge
As privacy concerns grow, email analytics traditionally reliant on open rates and pixel tracking will pose a problem. Instead, technology services will create email analytics tools that respect privacy through anonymity yet provide useful statistics. Email marketers will desire engagement statistics based more on clicks, conversion rates, and replies, which focus on more informational metrics without providing intrusive expectations, but facilitating a better understanding of campaign success while operating under compliant guidelines.
AI and Machine Learning Will Allow for Personalized Content Without Intrusion
AI and machine learning all but dominate the email marketing landscape and to operate within a privacy-driven future, they’ll allow companies to personalize without tracking and data collection. For example, email marketers can personalize based on first-party data that is readily available and sanctioned transparent interactions since machine learning can appropriately assess great trends on a micro-level. In addition, other opportunities arise from AI-driven predictive modeling and contextual targeting that create possibilities for personalization that keeps email content relevant, engaging, and useful without crossing the line.
Consent Management Will Be More Robust and Transparency Will Reign Supreme
More than ever, email marketers will operate based on developing consent management opportunities to ensure they comply while communicating expectations for consumer trust. For example, expected communication about what information is collected, how it’s collected, why and for how long plus obvious opportunities to opt-in and out create a trust-building effort where the email marketer wants their potential subscribers to be in the know. Consistent transparency will show the efforts of an email marketer who wants to remain compliant with expectations of privacy and will cultivate more reliable, trusted subscribers who understand the intent of the campaign.
Email Deliverability Becomes Even More of An Issue As Privacy Reigns Supreme
As data privacy continues to be a growing concern for consumers and regulators, expect email deliverability to be an issue as well. ISPs and emails like Gmail and Yahoo will increase their privacy filters, sending to spam anything that appears unauthorized or illegitimate. Thus, brands and marketers need to focus even more on sender reputation, authentication (DMARC, DKIM, SPF), and consistent high-quality communication that presents value to avoid spam boxes and blocks from an increasingly wary ISP network.
Email Content Becomes More Interactive and Contextually Based Experiences
Without all the tracking phenomena, marketers will be motivated to create experiential, contextually relevant email content to drive engagement without invasive means. From surveys and quizzes to email applications with dynamic blocks, real-time updates that allow consumers to engage with what’s presented provide value without seeming too nosy. Additionally, as context is built dynamically or through engagement, receiving this kind of content will feel like a valued exchange or opportunity, not an invasive outreach, which drastically improves consumer sentiment.
Email Infrastructure and Data Processing Has to Become Secure
When consumers realize that they have more control over privacy and protection, the need for an incredibly secure email infrastructure must come next. Reminders for marketers during the implementation process need to include that secure processing through encryption, protective messaging, and transparent communications drive consumer trust and avoid issues of non-compliance. Legacy brands that establish this secure infrastructure sooner rather than later can hold on to subscribers who value their privacy.
Relationship Building With an Emphasis on Value Exchange Becomes Critical
As email marketing efforts become more privacy-centric, the intention is to build even greater relationships of value exchange. Customers are much more selective about offering their information, and giving consent to a decision to stay subscribed to a brand’s email efforts must have tangible reasons, valued insights, genuinely exclusive offers, etc. When the channel of engagement exists because of such a powerful exchange, customers are better positioned to accept the long-term opportunity of email marketing as they evolve into engaged participants.
The Marketing and Compliance Departments Work Closer Than Ever
Email marketing includes compliance; it’s an educated, safety-first, and legal approach to what could be sent for years on end but is now restricted due to new laws and regulations surrounding customer privacy access. Never has there been a time more essential for compliance-trained professionals to partner with the marketing department; however, with such privacy laws in play, they need to partner now to ensure consistent privacy adjustments to email efforts, learning changes throughout the year and implementation and assessment from both sides. The marketing team must understand compliance regulations and how those regulations impact what can and cannot be sent in branded emails. Simultaneously, compliance needs to understand what the marketing team requires so that its endeavors avoid crossing privacy lines that evoke legal issues. This newfound partnership helps the compliance-trained professional avoid missteps while allowing the marketing team to uphold brand safety, satisfaction, and loyalty as they position the brand in the 2023 and beyond internet with trustworthiness now on the forefront.
Increased Chance for Ongoing Change With No End in Sight
Privacy rights can rapidly increase at any time for any reason. Be it public sentiment, governmental inquiries, or nuancing developers and regulations, there’s always a chance that more changes can occur that stray miles away from the original intent. Therefore, marketers must continually adapt; this is not a one-and-done email pivot process like they’ve established in the past to get by. This is an adjustment that means more adjustments will come down the line. Therefore, ongoing efforts must be established. Those who can be the champions of compliance and acknowledge operating procedures with slightly shifted trends will gain an advantage with customer loyalty over time against those who simply adjust one time without intent to change anything down the line.
Zero-Party Data Becomes More Commonplace
With a privacy-first world emerging, marketers will constantly turn to zero-party data. When customers offer brands insight into their preferences, needs, and intentions, email marketers can leverage interactive surveys and preference centers or encourage user-generated content to obtain this data. Gathering zero-party data adheres to the highest privacy standards while also putting the customer in the driver’s seat as a valued contributor to their own customer journey, facilitating relationships and trust.
New Technology Moves Faster to Market for Privacy Solutions
These types of technologies and the implementation of them will be heavily adopted by marketers in a progressive attempt to maintain ethical practices. From differential privacy to anonymized tracking technologies to secure multi-party computation, what’s better for marketers to understand their audience better than to keep all findings and insights private? For example, with differential privacy, a company can discern trends and additional information across an anonymous database without having access to anyone’s private, sensitive information. For marketers, this means they can know what their audience likes or wants better without ever knowing whom (or how many) they are. Similarly, with anonymized tracking technologies, marketers can see whether a consumer’s response to a retailer on Facebook translates to a retailer on Target when they go shopping in person. However, instead of knowing specific users’ identities, those identifying characteristics will be stripped.
Similarly, secure multi-party computation will allow marketers to work with third parties and review both databases without ever having access to identifying or proprietary information from either end. With these types of operations in place, marketers will gain access to comprehensive audience behavior reviews, campaign effectiveness reviews, and user engagement reports using these means while simultaneously ensuring compliance with complicated privacy protections and regulations.
This essentially positions email marketers as ethical stewards of proprietary consumer information and better yet, stewards that care enough to implement such technology from a prevention standpoint to avoid any brand complications from the regulatory review board. Not to mention, it increases consumer trust and brand loyalty. When brands make it known that they care enough to invest in top-of-the-line privacy-based technology, it lets consumers know that they are only using data resources legally and ethically. Thus, the more trust a consumer has about a brand’s ability to keep private and confidential information safe and secure, the better the relationship they’ll have with the customer in the future resulting in retention and satisfaction.
Cross-Channel Integration Becomes Essential
Furthermore, as privacy laws emerge and consumers become more aware of how their personal details are used, relying on integration with email and other marketing channels is critical. When consumers get in touch with brands, it’s not only via email. They have established connections across multiple channels and touchpoints social media, SMS, websites, apps, even face-to-face which also offer specific opportunities for integration on a more extensive level. Therefore, once marketers can gauge the extent of engagement and avoid the pitfalls of privacy concerns within one channel, they’re much more apt to champion consistent, authoritative messaging approved by suitable channels for the highest engagement capabilities.
Integration allows brands to understand separate data points relative to multiple channel efforts and create one view for even more useful incursions that do not infringe on customer privacy but instead show that a brand knows what’s best for its customers based on what it already has. Marketers don’t have to worry about audiences acquired on different channels getting lost in the shuffle or potential concerns of privacy challenges actually deemed resolved but newly found after the fact. Integration makes not only customer experiences seamless but paradoxically also customized, as customers expect consistently integrated communication that makes sense yet relies on previous patterns of engagement to be something.
At the same time, integration lessens the likelihood that data will go astray or privacy concerns challenged. When a brand can integrate channels and access points with relative ease and monitor user permissions over time, it’s more manageable to ensure no individuals are overstepped along the way concerning permissions given. A successful integration approach will create a 360-degree view of the customer journey, fostering appropriate and timely intersections while ensuring privacy at every turn. This approach will effectively make marketers’ lives easier, establishing a sense of cohesion that brings everything together instead of a piecemeal approach.