For the past few business cycles, Yahoogle has joined the previous party started by Apple to "improve" the email channel... but all of those improvements have more than a hint of sulfur to them, especially if you attempt to do, gasp, business in the channel. And since no one wants to stand up for professional emailers and even if they did, Yahoogle owns their channel and can and will do whatever they please... well, we're just all going to dance to their tune.
Here's what the Big Tech Big Daddys have planned for us.
1) 1-click unsubscribe in the header. Hey, do you know how you've been able to find unsubscribe links for the vast majority of emails you've ever received in your entire life in the footer? And how, yeah, it might involve a little bit of scrolling, but it means that when you do break off contact with someone, you kind of had to mean to?
Well, that's not good enough anymore. Instead, we're going to have big fat UNSUBSCRIBE links (1 click, too! Heaven forbid you have to confirm anything) in the header area, so you can dramatically increase your chance of doing that by accident, especially on mobile devices. Don't you feel better now that Yahoogle is making your lives easier?
2) They are also going to look at "engagement data" (what data? Why, if we told you that, The Spammers Would Win!) to help determine what should go to the inbox. But since we've already systemically destroyed open as a metric with someone's idea of privacy (thanks, Apple! It's not as if we've been using that metric as a key performance indicator for the success of our emails for the last 30 years or anything), then we should go to click data. Not read rates, not multi-open, not multi-click, not long tail opens or long tail clicks... or maybe yes, who knows. Just clicks.
Except those can be gamed by bots and bad actors, so probably not clicks either. Next year.
3) These moves have, of course, inspired other smaller email service providers to do the same. Because the not so dirty secret of email service providers is that they'd really love to not actually deliver any email, since that's an expense and all of the Kool Kidz went to social and SMS marketing years and years and years ago, because Email Is Dead and Old and never you mind that the metrics have never, ever actually followed that particular Naturalistic Fallacy.
So what does this make? A world in which unsubscribe rates and spam complaint is wildly more prone to misclick, creating a cycle in which less and less email gets to the inbox, which is, of course, what everyone says they want. And anyone with a rising rate (hint: people who use good dayparting, compelling subject lines, etc.) will run into more of this, and get dinged by these numbers, giving Yahoogle and its ilk all they need to... cut down on the number of emails that get to the inbox.
All without the end user ever likely knowing, because you like it when Big Tech solves "problems" for you, right? You can trust those people, and you'll never be able to get to Inbox Zero by yourself. (Um, I've been at Inbox Zero for my entire life. It's actually not that hard. Don't tell Yahoogle, they don't believe their users can actually do things for themselves.)
Or, TL/DR... literacy? Commerce? A channel where people have to read and write and think? Won't that get in the way of the other enshittification moves that Big Tech is giving you, especially now that the low interest rates dumb VC money has gone so far away, and they need to make more off you while providing less?
Now, look, I get it. AI means more spam. So does a campaign year. People are busy, they get too much mail, they are looking to claw back their off hours. But giving up your personal agency to Big Tech Daddys isn't the way to do that. They are just going to make it harder for legitimate pros, while actual spammers will just find a way, as they always have.
Perhaps maybe ask pros, rather than just commit your usual hubris? Nah... what do emailers know? They work in email! Unlike... um...
Actually heard on a recent seminar: "We want to help inspire you to be better emailers." Oh, Thank You, Big Tech Big Daddy! We never thought of being better! (Side note: do you work with email pros that aren't constantly trying to get better? Usually by, I don't know, MATH, rather than hubris?)
Personally, it's all a win for M&AD; when the going gets tough, the tough go pro, and our bag of tricks has never been more full. But just because the world is better for this particular email marketing outfit does not mean it's better, or that Big Tech does not, in point of order, Suck.
So very, very much.
Reach out if you need us! And enjoy those Big Tech layoffs! Maybe they'll inspire the laid off personell to be better!
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