A hill worth dying on

Once upon a time, there was a client who had a severe problem in converting prospects to paid. The mid-funnel conversion materials appeared to be the culprit. Looking at this as an opportunity, we proposed a very different line of copy and creative for their marketing funnel efforts than what they had been doing.

The new approach was candid. Direct. Shorter and more decisive. On brand, but different. Risky but not really, because the previous effort left them with very little to lose. 

We wrote the copy, massaged it through an inordinate number of intermediaries and shareholders, who conttributed, added, edited and approved. Essentially, they left the premise the same, and expressed their enthusiasm for the approach. Level with the mid-funnel, tell them things that came off as candid and strikingly different than what they had heard before, and give them a clear message. 

It got all the way to the C-suite, at which point it was stopped by an executive... who decided that the messaging wasn't right. This was also a person who was responsible for the previous round of creative, so, well. 

The status quo was defended. The intermediaries and shareholders didn't push back. They are no longer a client.

Something to stress here. It's not an absolute certainty that our approach was right. If you are absolutely sure you are right, you have no need of marketing. Test, don't guess.

There's an old saying in business: is this hill worth dying on?

Usually, the answer is no.

But if it's never yes?

You're going to lose the client.

One way or another...

The price of perfection

A few years ago, I was working a free-lance contract at a behemoth tech company, getting their email campaigns up to snuff. Word came down from on high that accessibility for any subscriber with challenges was now a must have, so we spent several months with coders and QA to make sure that our work was as friendly as possible to anyone who wanted to interact with it.

What did this entail? Changing templates to accomodate for color blindness. Adjusting copy for homonyms that might throw a screen reader. Consideration of British or American spellings to see if there was anything to be gained from a switch. Widow and orphan line formatting. Modifying default fonts to make sure that challenged eyes weren't at risk. Eliminating multi-column graphic approaches because of the possibility of a mishap. Making sure everything worked on every possible device and platform, including those that had been out of market for years, because if it didn't work for every user, it would ruin the brand for that person. (Somehow, just the behemoth's.)

Mind you, this is just the stuff that I'm remembering right now, years later, because they got out of initial planning sessions. It took months, it cost an undisclosed and probably prohibitive amount, and when the project was done, our stuff was as airtight as anyone's emails, ever.

I then waited to see if anyone would ever notice, comment to us, or if the behemoth would try to capitalize on the investment in some way, possibly with PR. Never happened. Once the templates were adjusted and the new normals were in place, that was that. Project over, call it a day, work on the next thing and make sure everyone's in compliance. 

Perfection mattered more -- much more -- to the behemoth than the public.

What actually mattered from the changeover wasn't anything we actually did in the glow up. What actually mattered was making sure to add alt tags to images, which any good email system has been letting you do for decades, and just shows anyone using a screen reader that you cared about their experience. The price of perfection was steep, unjustifiable from an ROI standpoint, limiting to design and UI for the vast majority of users, and sidetracked the project for months.

I'm also sure the behemoth considered it a success, since it scratched a long-term itch, and played to their internal brand police. No one at the behemoth ever questioned the wisdom of the program, had to show its worth on a spreadsheet, or defend headcount reductions for the dev costs.

At least, not right away.

I'm all for accessibility, and glad the behemoth did it. If nothing else, I learned a lot, accessibility issues aren't going away, and the number of people with challenges is a lot higher than most people expect. 

But if an ordinary client were to ask me to head up a project?

I'd probably just tell them to code the alt-tags and call it a day.

Because when perfect is the enemy of good, or sensible? 

You wind up losing a lot more than you gain.

Big Tech decides to "fix" email. God help us all.

As part of my role for a recent client, I have been adding to my email bona fides, which also means going to webinars involving personnel from Gmail and Yahoo. For those of you who do not make a living out of this channel, let me catch you up. I promise it will be more interesting than you might imagine. Also, really infuriating!

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!