Life After Opens: New Consent Rules and the Metrics Worth Trusting

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to Email After Hours by SenderScore. Powered by validity.

Speaker A: We're your hosts. My name is Guy Hanson.

Speaker B: And I'm Danielle Gallant. And this is Email After Hours. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Email After Hours. Uh, today, once again, you're stuck with Guy and I. Uh, we are going to go through our usual of, uh, what's on our mind. Email developments in the industry never sleeps. And perhaps we'll even throw in one of our classic rants. How are you, Guy? What's on your mind?

Speaker A: I do love a good rant. As you can see, I'm very, um, dapper today. It's, uh, one of my London office visits. So, uh, I have to, uh, check, dress up to see my colleagues rather than slopping around at home in my golf.

Speaker B: Always dapper. I don't do.

Speaker A: Yes. I can't. One thing that I've been thinking about and not sure if you've been following this, Daniel, I know that you actually work with a couple of clients in my neck of the woods in Europe and France. And, um, have you been keeping an eye, um, on the latest news, particularly from France, where their regulator, the Knill, is now enforcing mandatory consent to use open tracking in marketing emails?

Speaker B: I am, I definitely am. I'm in the middle of having like, GDPR type PTSD flashbacks for the benefit of the listeners. Tell us. Explain.

Speaker A: So, I mean, firstly, it's not a new law. Um, email marketing in Europe has been governed by the privacy directed for years already. And, uh, even when it first came into place, they were talking about this idea that email tracking pixels are basically cookies in the eye of the law. Um, what has changed already in France and it's in progress in Italy is basically saying, well, okay, then you need explicit consent, um, to use tracking pixels in your emails. And you know that consent's got to be unbundled. It's not same as the consent that you solicit to send marketing emails. And, um, there are some very narrow exemptions, you know, particularly if you need to prove that you've sent, um, you know, a mandatory required email. For example, um, we are seeing that some of the major email service providers are already upgrading their tooling to, um, help senders deal with this requirement. And I have heard from, um, one or two customers that we work with who are close to Kinil, the French regulator, um, that it's entirely possible that click tracking is on the radar too, and may go down the same route within the next year or so. So, you know, it's all change and um, you know, while this is a EU specific development, I feel like, as is often the case, you know, it's important for senders around the world, including North America, um, you know, because industry trends have a habit of following each other. But as we've also talked about before, you know, some of these are just best practices that have been turned into law. And when you're forced to adopt best practices, guess what, you know, maybe your improvement and engagement, uh, you know, your engagement improves because of that.

Speaker B: So these all become global. Right? Even you have subscribers in these regions and usually there's one domino that falls. In the US it's like a California, in the eu it's like a Germany or a France and it just begins and it cascades from there. So everybody should really be prepared for it. I've seen a couple of the senders that I work with that have international business units. It send examples um, of these types of emails, these permissioning emails to me and I just wanted to, I want to get into best practices for a minute. Guy, I'll throw back to you for like general best practices for maybe those who are already in France who have to comply with this law already of course. But then for the countries that follow, the good emails are that explain why they're seeking permission or you know, opting out. Opting, uh, giving subscribers the um, option to opt out of this. Pixel tracking, they're extremely simple. For France there was a series, there was a two part progression. For this law they use very clear basic bullet points. There's no imagery in these emails. A concise plain language summary of what the change is and then one obvious email engagement point. Uh, no more, no less. Don't over complicate it of course. Fall back on your legal team. What other best practices for um, auditing really making sure you're compliant would you throw out there?

Speaker A: Well, I think um, you know, of course the, the key date was mid July and so since then there is no wriggle room, active enforcement is in place. So I'd suggest any sender that's sort of late to the party. And remember, we're not just talking French senders, we are talking anyone around the world who is sending to at least one French subscriber. So uh, you know, that's not to interrupt you guy.

Speaker B: Has this been super quiet for you? Like for me, I'm, I'm stunned by how few senders that I know who have international programs or business units, um, or even just have a global footprint have really investigated like asked about this.

Speaker A: I Think you're right. And I mean, I put up a post on LinkedIn about this a few weeks ago and it generated a ton of readership. I can only tell you so clearly an appetite for the topic. And as I was going to say, you know, given that enforcement began in mid July, anyone that's late to this story needs to move quickly to move into compliance because, um, you know, this requirement is underpinned by gdpr, so uh, you know, non compliance is going to result in GDPR level fines. I think what you were just saying, absolutely spot on. I would suggest to anyone that's coming at this late, you should probably adopt a pixel off approach with immediate effect while you're figuring out, um, how you're going to move towards compliance. Absolutely. Go and revisit those sort of triggered and automated campaigns which everyone forgets about until, uh, it's too late. And um, and I think have a look at what your email service providers have been doing with their tooling. I think a lot of them have moved quite quickly to make um, this level of granular consent easy to um, implement and measure. And I think it's important, I mean, Danielle, you and I, we love looking at what's going on in our sort of personal accounts and our test accounts. Um, I don't know if you've been having a look at some of your French senders to sort of see how they've been dealing with this, uh, the method they've been sending to you.

Speaker B: Naughty, naughty. Sometimes you're still including when I definitely have not either declined or accepted engagement tracking. I'm not going to. I feel like this would be the one case where I should name names, but I'm not going to because I'm not going to throw you under the bus to any regulatory authorities are going to be disappointed.

Speaker A: You're a noun for naming and sham.

Speaker B: I know it's bad. Uh, don't worry, it's coming. What about you? Are you seeing the same thing?

Speaker A: I am seeing? Patchy implementation at best. I think, uh, there's some programs that have absolutely done it by the book. They sent me my advisory email explaining exactly what they do with pixel tracking. And if I'm uncomfortable with that, here's how I opt in and subsequent opt out links in their emails. Great. You know, 10 out of 10. But equally I am seeing some big French brands who are continuing to embed their tracking pixels with impunity. There have been no advisories. Um, in some cases, you know, their signup forms have yet to be updated with separate Consent boxes. And, uh, all I can say is move quickly, guys, because I'm sure the Kinnell will be looking to make, uh, an example out of one or two of them, especially if they're sort of, you know, high recognition, big name brands that they can sort of showcase to the rest of the industry in terms of.

Speaker B: There's always, ah, an example, an example to be made of somebody. Don't be.

Speaker A: That's right. But you know what it brings to my mind, Danielle? I mean, we have spoken about open tracking a lot over the last couple of years and, uh, you know, we've talked about how, as a metric, it's sort of devalued with the introduction of image caching and MPP and filter testing, et cetera. Do we even need open tracking anymore, do you think?

Speaker B: Is this where I get to rant?

Speaker A: If you want to.

Speaker B: Maybe I won't. Okay, maybe I won't rant. We've talked about on this podcast before, open data has a directional value. Um, that's my view, plain and simple. But it's not, oh, this person engaged with my mail because I have an open associated with it. Um, I'm gonna, instead of going on a rant, put the question to our listeners. What are you guys using pixels for in your emails now? Is it for, I guess, maybe dwell time, possibly. Which is a valuable metric, but where it's relevant? Because often it's not relevant, uh, or accurate, I should say, not relevant. Um, is it for device tracking? Like, what. What are we actually using pixels in emails for? At this stage, of course, it's incredibly important to be ensuring that you know what your devices are within your subscriber base and are optimizing your templates to meet the myriad of different mail clients and devices that should be happening regardless of what the pixel is telling you. To me, pixels are now like social media icon links in the bottom of emails where it's like, what are we using this for? Is anyone clicking on this? So that is my question. Please tell us, what are you using pixels for in your emails?

Speaker A: I think that's right. And, um, yeah, I think, certainly coming back to the French guidance for just a second, they've made it very clear that, um, any pixel tracking for the purpose of email analytics or customer profiling or lead scoring is absolutely beyond the scope of what's acceptable. So all of those use cases fall away. I was speaking to one of our big French customers the other day and they basically said, we are retiring pixel tracking, period. Um, we probably don't need it. And this is just the right pretext to stop using it. And I said, so, what are you going to be doing instead? And they said, we're going to be prioritizing other metrics which are probably more valuable to us anyway. And, uh, I was really pleased to hear them talking about reply rate because, uh, you and I have talking about this plenty this year. And this particular customer was saying, listen, you know, it's one of the purest signals of engagement you can get from your customers when they've received one of your marketing emails and they reply back to you going, hey, you know, please tell us more. Um, you know, it could even be a new sales opportunity. And so, you know, monitoring that and measuring it is a obvious replacement, you know, for a flawed open metric. You know, personally, I find myself thinking, you know, what else could you do? Um, I love the idea that a load more senders should be implementing effectively an email NPS score using all the feedback you get from those rate these email or how we doing pieces of functionality, but not just collecting the data for the sake of collecting it, actually reviewing that data. We've got at least one highly progressive customer. I know they meet once a week to review that data. How's it trending? Is it good or is it bad? Um, if there's room for improvement, somebody takes ownership of a task to act on it and, you know, improve what they're doing, I'm in.

Speaker B: I think I completely agree with you there. I think when I, uh, speak, uh, to clients about the data that we're in, the last year, two years especially, there has been, maybe even though open data, open signals were degraded long before. Like, it's not just the last two years. I feel like there's been an acceptance, a greater acceptance that this type of traditional data is not as, um, articulate, not as useful as it used to be, or certainly not for the same reasons. But the question still comes up, what can we use then? We don't want to operate with no data. We don't want to have to invent, you know, reasons to communicate, send more email to get more replies, that kind of thing necessarily. What are the mailbox providers gonna give us? What's changing with the data that they're gonna provide? And there is news there.

Speaker A: There is. I think I know what you're alluding to here. And, uh, hopefully it's gonna happen because, I mean, you talk about acceptance from senders, but I do feel it's of the sort of slightly weary shoulder shrugging, oh, crap, you've just given Us another hoop to jump over kind of acceptance. But um, yeah, I think what you're alluding to is the new IETF discussion paper we've seen for um, we've got another new acronym, don't we?

Speaker B: I feel like we should have a little bell whenever we have a new acronym which is going to happen.

Speaker A: A, P, R, F. Um, you want to tell us what it means or shall I?

Speaker B: APRF is aggregate performance reporting and this is a, it's like a uh, simplified aggregated feedback mechanism that tells senders what they want to know. How is your mail actually performing at a given mailbox provider?

Speaker A: That's right. So I mean a bit like the data you get back if you've got your DMARC record published and mhm. But different data points. So uh, yeah, and some of these could be quite interesting, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And we're seeing that um, some mailbox providers, I believe earlier when we were chatting before we started recording Comcast has actually got this up and running. Is that right?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean already there's going to be some directional data covering stuff like right. What really did hit the inbox, you know, what did generate complaints, what did generate opens, uh, and if this is like a little sample of what suddenly becomes available, um, a lot of that sort of previous reverse engineering to figure out what's deprecating your sender score, suddenly it's not guesswork anymore because the mailbox providers are going to be telling you exactly what happened with the emails that you sent to them. So great that Comcast has already come to the party and uh, you know, if the big guns, if Gmail and Microsoft and Yahoo fall into line, um, you know, suddenly there's going to be a brand new source of engagement data which is far more accurate than the pixel based rubbish we've been relying on over recent years.

Speaker B: Exactly. And now that we think I have polls going on with some of the clients I work with about whether gmail postmaster tools v1 is actually going away. They say it is again in this October. But my position is just like the mailbox providers giveth and take it away. So we take what we get. But if this comes to your point, if this comes to fruition and if senders get access to this data from the big guns, uh, Chef's kiss. Beautiful.

Speaker A: I agree. And I mean you know, normally ietf, you know, this is the same organization that publishes industry standards like DMARC and dkim. Yeah, normally they are a pretty conservative organization and initiatives like this sort of, you know, take two to three years to move from initial discussion to, you know, brand new protocol. But it feels like there's a ton of appetite for this one. And uh, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it ends up moving a load quicker.

Speaker B: More to come, um, more to come else that you want to rant about. Comment on news on Today, Guy.

Speaker A: There's always stuff. But you know then what we're going to talk about next time out, right?

Speaker B: Exactly. That is why to our listeners, be sure to tune in next time, hit subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes. And of course, don't Forget to visit senderscore.org for more resources to help you become a stronger sender. Thank you so much and we'll talk to you next time, right Guy?

Speaker A: Absolutely. See you guys soon. Be sure to tune in next time and hit subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And don't Forget to visit senderscore.com for loads more great resources to help you become a stronger sender.

Speaker B: To all you sleepless senders out there, thank you for joining us after hours and see you next time.