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Ep 464: Email Marketing in 2025: Why Gmail's New Spam Rules Demand Sniper Segments | AKNF
00:24:30
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- [00:00]
A
It was a banner year for Shopify and every single year prints a new high. So E commerce just becomes bigger and bigger. Shopping from home is how basically people shop. Now the one thing that sticks out from our perspective, a change in the way that inbox providers are sending messages to spam. If you are a brand that does email, this affects you. It's going to have to change the way everybody approaches their email program. A lot of the stuff that I'm talking about, having a rich segmentation model paying attention to different parts of your audience that you're speaking to, bottom line, that stuff's all going the way of the dodo. AI is going to do all that. But if you're out there, here's your chance to actually learn how the segmentation in the audiences work.
- [00:53]
B
It's all killer, no filler. The D2C podcast. I'm Eric and I'm here with the star of the podcast on the D2C podcast network, Twirlp, the world's best email and retention podcast, Jordan Gordon. Welcome back to all killer, no filler. Maybe let's start with a little. This is going to. We're on Cyber Tuesday here if that's such a thing. Just right after the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. Wednesday, Cyber Wednesday, I guess at this point, but this is going to launch a week out. But I'm just curious, what was your high level take on the retention side of Black Friday Cyber Monday in 2024?
- [01:25]
A
Um, we. Look, we had a lot of accounts that did really well and this is actually kind of just what you and I were talking about just for the pod started was like there's, it was like a banner year for Shopify and there's some articles floating around and I'll tell you, in the last 25 years I've been ecom in E Com every single year prints a new high. So E commerce just becomes bigger and bigger. Shopping from home is how basically people shop now. And you know, you had said, hey, it's. You've heard that it's out there in the, in the non Twitter sphere. Yeah, yeah, it's rough for people. So give me your, give me what you, what you've read there. I'm interested.
- [02:05]
B
It's hard to say. When I look at, you know, the pilot house channels, we're all shouting out all of our wins. So I see that and then I see a lot of the wins that the D2C influencers on Twitter, that Twitterati are promoting out there. So you hear a lot of those positive stories. I'VE heard privately some brands struggled. It's just, it's always going to be a case of haves or haves nots or and have nots. I know the tide is rising. As you know, Shopify's post indicates overall purchases are up. I think I heard that Cyber Monday from a more than one person. Cyber Monday was a little weaker this year and that it was a little bit more front loaded than in previous years. But what did you see on, on some of our major accounts?
- [02:44]
A
Well, first of all, interesting point on the, you know, some people out there saying it's difficult and the haves and have nots. The article that was going around, the interesting thing that the gentleman was saying was that a lot of the brands that are just selling tons are new brands. Right. So kind of like, you know, the storied brands are having, are having a hard time because new upstarts that are kind of online native understand exactly how people are shopping, understand exactly how to talk to them. The moats are getting very, very dry, right. The barriers to entry are getting very, very low. And kind of if you've got a good idea or can, you know, a good product or you can give, you know, the same quality product for a little bit cheaper, you can just go at Shopify and just smash. So that's the interesting point there is. Yeah. Some people are struggling and a lot of them are the storied brands. Yeah. I'll just say that generally our brands did really well and were up. The one thing that sticks out, and I've got a, I've got a podcast on it dropping in like early January. So I won't give it all away. Everybody, of course, go out, subscribe to the world's best email retention podcast. Check out that episode when it drops. But the one thing that sticks out from our perspective is a change in the way that inbox providers are sending messages to spam. Right. And this is a little under the hood, but if you, but if you are a brand that does email, this affects you. So they all do.
- [04:22]
B
They have to.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah, they can't scale without email. So I'll just break this down a bit. Right. We discussed epic year for Shopify. Right. And also like, you know, my wife and I moved to Mexico. We actually still technically are Canadian residents. We don't stay anywhere long enough to become tax residents. We want to check out Paraguay and Argentina too. So I'm kind of, you know, getting a feel for the Latino sphere. And I checked out Shopify and there's like 6 or 7% as many Shopify accounts in the Latino sphere as there is in the Anglosphere. Right. So early days. I mean, if you, if you assume the economy is going to progress the same, there's a lot of Runway and there's a lot more emails to stuff in Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Inboxes and Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are reacting and they're tightening, right? Because this whole thing is just compounding and exploding and everybody's just stuffing so many emails in the inbox. So the difference that we saw, that I noticed this year, and this is new from last year and I, we've been on it a couple of times and I've said, you don't. We don't know what's going to happen this year. It's a new year in a new kind of inboxing regime. So in the old way of doing things, you kind of. There was a statistical, a statistical threshold. You had to make it with the inbox providers for them to say this email is good enough to inbox. And it's like the construction of the email. A lot of it's mostly just engagement or people clicking. And we've had this talk many times. Hey, you know, one Navy SEAL can take two kind of hostages, right? You know what I mean? One really engaged address can get two kind of lesser engaged addresses into an email. What I saw this year, to a much greater degree than I'd ever seen is selectively putting addresses into spam, where even if the email is fine, inbox is fine, sells lots making money. When you look, we do a 12 segment model, so we look at all different parts of the audience and there were just groups within there. Even though the email was fine, just boom, in spam. And so what Gmail and Yahoo are kind of saying, I think is you guys go stuff yourselves. Because of course, what do we spammers do? We do the Navy SEALS thing. Hey, we'll get just enough engaged addresses in and then stuff in these unengaged ones. Make sure they see the sale. Right. You know, and kind of just, yeah, they're just like, tell you what, we'll just do the segmentation for you. So that's. I saw that to a greater degree than I'd ever seen. Because of course it's a, it was a banner year for ecom. Every year's a banner year for ecom. Basically, it's never end. Uh, so that's gonna change. I mean, look, it's gonna change the way that we approach, but it should, it's gonna have to change the way everybody approaches their email program.
- [07:12]
B
So are we. Are you saying that it's like in. In previous years where you would have seen like, maybe bigger segments going to spam, kind of being cast with the same brush that Google's starting to get smarter in the same way we talk about shotgun versus sniper rifles, they're able to sniper off the ones that should be in spam, rather than sending whole emails to spam.
- [07:32]
A
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. And for all of you who are listening and of course subscribe to the world's best email retention podcast. I talk about in this episode, sniper segments and continuation and these things that you can do to improve your program in 2025 to build an audience and also some other topics to build an audience. But kind of big takeaway things that you and I were talking about two years ago are even, because the trend is clear, right. Harder to get in the inbox if you're sending crap or you're sending to people who aren't interested. So those things are just all the more relevant. And I had to go through and watch these old episodes again and kind of reacquaint myself so I could do the podcast.
- [08:12]
B
Cool. So Google getting smarter, as always. More emails to send. Do we send more emails this year? I think that was a theme last year during Black Friday that we felt we had to send more emails to achieve the same results. Did that trend continue or have we kind of maxed out on emails sent?
- [08:29]
A
It's pretty much the standard now to like send three or so emails on Black Friday proper. You know what I mean? And then the days around that, it's pretty much standard to like just pummel the inbox. But here's the. Here's the thing. Everybody out there, right? If you do that and you don't tighten it, Gmail and Yahoo are going to pick who they don't want to send to. And listen to this. They're going to pick who they don't want to send to. Did they know which of those addresses are your whale repeat buyers? No. No.
- [08:59]
B
They have no idea.
- [09:00]
A
They don't know?
- [09:01]
B
No.
- [09:01]
A
Right. So you don't want them selecting which messages to not include. So sniper segments, we're going to get into it in the episode in January and we'll tell everybody where to go to look to reacquaint themselves with that from a couple years ago. But yeah, the standard is lots of messages. But everybody out there, you gotta make sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot and send to too large an audience. So that Gmail starts picking stuff off and they. And they pick off the ones you don't want them to pick off. And this is. There's gonna be this, this tug, this push and pull that's gonna happen. I mean, forever, basically.
- [09:35]
B
You also mentioned just a little tidbit here, but you mentioned a really successful subject line that you piloted, this Black Friday. What was that?
- [09:42]
A
Yeah, this was just kind of. I just noticed this one. Someone brought it to me and because it actually contradicted one of my statements in the two Black Friday episodes I did, and I have nothing like shame. So I don't mind coming out here and saying, hey, here's something that was particularly worked, even if it goes against my recommendations. Also, I think my recommendations more often than not will steer you in the right direction. Of course. Of course a subject line can win. But it was interesting. It was. And yeah, Brianna, my number one, brought it to me. She used it. And it was not your average Black Friday email with the two little eyes looking sideways. Right. So just not your average Black Friday email. And that. That was very successful, you know, and.
- [10:28]
B
That'S the whole thing that sets you up.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, it is just like later in the season and she pointed out, and it makes. This is. And this is exactly what I said in my Black Friday kind of talks was, yeah, if you want to get cute, get cute later on when everybody is completely aware of your offer. So don't lead with. She was. This was like almost before Black Friday story was into Black Friday. So, yeah, it just won. So look, a couple of the things here that I wanted to just kind of touch on that that we discussed, and maybe you might find them interesting. I did a talk on the six biggest mistakes people are making in segmentation. And I was actually musing on this one this morning as I was looking on my calendar. Oh, yeah, I got the DTC podcast today that, like a lot of the stuff that I'm talking about, you know, having a rich segmentation model, paying attention to different parts of your audience that you're speaking to, bottom line, that stuff's all going the way of the dodo. AI is going to do all that. You know, it's just right now, the companies that are at the level of AI where they can just do that. It's the Googles and the metas. Klaviyo is not there yet. But as the technology becomes more affordable, more ubiquitous, you know, just like Gmail and Yahoo are picking which addresses to drop, Klaviyo is going to pick which addresses to even send. And so first of all, I don't know what the running room is for that. It might be in a couple of years, right? But if you're out there, here's your chance, and you're running out of chance to actually learn how the segmentation in the audiences work. And here's the import. Your job in future will be to evaluate how well an AI system is going to work at scale by looking at tests. Because you're going to say it's going to take, it's going to take money and time to launch this thing. You're going to send a small amount or you're going to do a, you know, you're going to do a, an introductory thing, a small thing, and then you're going to look at the results and you're going to evaluate is this right for my, for my audience, for my technical system, for my digital ecosystem. And then you're going to go large. So one, everybody up there, how to do like statistical significance, first of all, but also just if you don't understand how it works under the hood, how are you going to evaluate if what you're going to be launching is right? So that, you know, go check out the pod on the six biggest mistakes people are making in segmentation to get an understanding of what's happening with segmentation. But also keep in mind, learn, figure out what you're doing here. Get under the hood and figure email out. Because once the AIs are doing it, if you don't understand what they're applying their stuff to, you're going to just be in the dark and you're just hoping for the best.
- [13:13]
B
That applies to so much in the media buying and advertising world. You know, whether you know, whether you're using Meta's AI tools or Google's AI tools, you need to know what each part does, even if you're using them so that you can kind of reverse engineer, pull data out. And quite often you're, you can, you can do better than those tools can, especially in the early days. So it really behooves you to get good at it.
- [13:35]
A
Yeah, for sure. And so look, wrap all this up. I'll just say wrap all this up. What we're thinking about and what I'm thinking about in my sales process and what I'll recommend to anybody. We talked about in the very first episode of Twebert, we talked about the four different strategies someone can use for their account. And one was time savings that was focused on a lot of Automations Well, I'll tell you what, if campaigns are going to be more restricted and I've been on your pod and my own pod saying like, hey, what's up? When you've got like, you know, 60% open rate and a 0.42% click through rate and if you go in and remove your Apple Privacy opens, it's going to cut your list size in half. What you're doing is just sending out a bunch of emails. How'd your click rate get so low? Gmail and Yahoo are just putting it in spam. I was watching it all year and finally as I had all the data I knew what was going on but I was watching it happen all year. So if that's what's going on for you, it's like time to get off the camp. It's like I remember when I was a young man working, went over to Germany and got really hungover and went to work and the kind of the boss sat me down and said hey Jordan, I think it's time to switch to beer. You know what I mean? So it's like hey, if that's what's happening with your campaign program, it's time to switch to flows, right? It's time to really focus on speaking to people in an automated fashion because Gmail and Yahoo are getting indigestion on your massive campaign bloat. So that's a big thing that we're going to just be talking about this year.
- [15:08]
B
Switch to beer in the new year. I love it. Interesting. Yeah. This game is only evolving so you've got to just keep, you got to stay ahead of the curve. Um, I'm sure there's lots of people in the audience right now who probably have like we use the Marine who can carry, you know, maybe non respondent addresses. I bet your Marines are tired after Black Friday Cyber Monday, right? Like their legs, their dogs are barking and I bet there's a lot of brands like what, what? How do you know? You know like after Black Friday Cyber Monday, is there a hangover period where you've got to like rehab things a little bit in, in a lot of cases or we.
- [15:46]
A
That was our original sniper segments pod. Yeah, it was, it was two January's ago. That's exactly right. So you tighten up significantly in January and look, here's the research. Most of the revenue in any campaign is from people who've been on the site in the last 30 days period, right? So when you tighten up the net loss if you're in the inbox when you tighten up is small when you. When you're in the spam folder, and you tighten up the net losses again because you increase your audience. More people see that, more people see the messages. So, absolutely, this is kind of what we said in our kind of client calls going to the end of the year. Hey, if we're not cleaning up your inboxing in January, we didn't go hard enough. So everybody out there, if you're like, if things are looking rough in January, it's like a good New Year's Eve hangover. Good for you. You really went for it, you know? And now just make yourself have an orange juice and just kind of slow it down a little bit.
- [16:40]
B
Liquor to beer to orange juice. I see the life cycle. I just have a selfish question. Have you ever worked for a brand? I know you worked with some big Fortune 500 brands, maybe before this, that used dedicated IPs versus shared IP pools.
- [16:58]
A
I mean, there was no such thing as a shared IP pool when I started. First of all, that wasn't a thing. You just had your own domain. You had your own ip, and you were just, you know, three sheets to the wind. Here's the thing. When you're on. When you're on a shared ip, look, it's the tragedy of the commons, right? As there's usually, like for Klaviyo, for instance, you're on a different sender, but I'm sure it's the same. You've got different tiers. And as long as you can remain in, you know, the highest tier, you want to send as dirty as you can, but still stay in the highest tier. It's like a game of blackjack, right? So. And, you know, if you make a mistake, other people kind of, but you recover from it, other people's sending smooths it over. When you have your own ip, the benefit is if you are really, really, really clean about everything, about the way you construct your messages, you know, your subject lines, your. Your engagement, everything, then you get all the benefit. And of course, the opposite is if you are dirty, you don't have anyone to lift you up. So it's kind of like it's all up to you. Once you're on your own ip, uh, there's. There's good things and bad things. Um, I mean, at a certain size, I think everybody's on their own ip. There is. I don't remember the number. I'd have to go look up the number. But there's. There's a send size where you should be on your Own ip. And like, I mean, honestly, I think it's, I think it's probably, I think you're there.
- [18:30]
B
Yeah, we're there. And because we send so regularly, we're not sending campaigns. We're not, you know, we're only sending five, you know, what people are expecting five times a week, which is a lot for some people for sure. But yeah, it's funny, I remember reading a case study by Marketing Brew, who's a brand, a company that we've been following closely since they started Morning Brew rather, and they saw huge benefits by going to a dedicated ip.
- [18:54]
A
And so if your send size is too high and you're on the ship and you're not on your own ip, it's going to be scrutinized differently. This is my, this is my understanding. We haven't, we haven't actually tested this specifically on, on the switch. So I'm just going to say my understanding, but my understanding is that if you are on a shared ip, you're scrutinized differently. And here's, here's like one, Another important point. So what Gmail likes, and I'm sure the other ones too, is predictability. So if you've got a million addresses and you just send a nice clean million million 190 99, you know what I mean? And it's just like that time, they love that because then they can figure out how much throughput they need. They can project. If you're going like this all over the place, it can cause a bit of trouble. So you, you guys are super predictable. So if you're going to go on a shared ip, which can go like this, it's actually going to make it a little bit worse for you. If you, if you were on your own ip, you'd have that advantage too. I mean, like, bottom line, I think you should do it.
- [19:57]
B
Yeah, we're going to. You heard it here first. I've been, I've been wanting, pushing for it for a while and I think I've got the organizational fortitude now to make it happen. It's funny, you know, your metaphor with the Marines taking, you know, dead emails across the list or whatever. That's the way the whole system works, right? If you think about. Because someone would take our regular sending and there we've had companies try to talk us out of going to a dedicated ip, probably because they like having us in their shared pools because we're so predictable. They lift up some of their other people. So it's a bit of a. Bit of a dance.
- [20:28]
A
There too, Right? Yeah, of course. If they look at you and your click through rate is above their average click through rate, they want you in.
- [20:37]
B
Yeah, period.
- [20:37]
A
If it's below, they don't necessarily want you in. Well, I mean, if you're paying, they'll still take you, right? Yeah, that's how that works.
- [20:43]
B
Interesting. Cool. What's been your favorite episode for people who are listening to this podcast but haven't yet jumped over to TWRP to make it a regular of their podcast? What episode do you recommend people jump into? The first one.
- [20:57]
A
Email Fight Companion.
- [20:58]
B
Oh, that's right. Email Fight Companion. It's a cool idea.
- [21:01]
A
Email Fight Companion. And we ran for anybody who didn't see the little. The teasers and stuff. We ran 12 brands, six bouts to see which are. Yeah, six bouts, seven, eight bouts. Some of them are double bouts to see which brands have the best emails. It was really fun. We ran the Federal Reserve against Pampers. So the organization that gives financial liquidity to the world against the organization that gives diapers to the world, you know.
- [21:30]
B
So there was some liquidity. It stops liquidity for a lot. For a certain portion of the population.
- [21:35]
A
It does stop liquidity. That's true. And what we also had of course very serious bouts. Ralph Lauren versus Gucci, which is. Which was the lead bout. Durer versus Anthropologie, kind of a newer brand versus an established brand, you know, punching above its weight. Best email of the night went to Anthropologie who make amazing, beautiful emails. So if you, if you're at all interested in just looking at hearing three, we also had the two other channel heads so it's like three channel heads looking at messages, giving their thoughts, you know, from a wide, you know, e commerce wide perspective and looking for ideas that you from there to improve your own layouts and designs. Great episode to watch also. Lots of fun.
- [22:21]
B
Nice. All right, well go check that out on Spotify or YouTube because you probably want to get the visuals along with it. We'll maybe include a link to that one in the show notes here. But otherwise we just got our Spotify wrapped for the year. We'll be putting some of that out on social media. One of my favorite stats about ours is that there was 500 people who we were their number one podcasts that they listened to the most. And I was looking at yours and I think you guys already have like 20 or 30 people whose you are their number one most listened to podcast in this year's wrapped which and you've only started it Like, a couple months ago. So I'm really excited for the way it's going. Getting hundreds of listens on each episode.
- [22:58]
A
Are we ever going to get the E. Com head from Filson? He loved that Filson episode I did.
- [23:03]
B
Oh, that's. I was actually just going over his email today. I don't know if I sent it. I think it might have got lost in the Black Friday shuffle. But, yeah, I think that's such a great idea. To get more brands on the podcast is just to, like, review their funnels publicly. Then they got to contact us, right?
- [23:16]
A
Yeah. Well, especially if it's an amazing funnel. Right? You know, we'll only praise.
- [23:20]
B
We'll only. I like that. We'll only praise.
- [23:23]
A
Well, when we did email Fight Companion, there were some brands that lost, you know, and it's like H and M was a big loser, which is actually kind of. They're a big brand. So, you know, in that case, I mean, maybe we won't tag H and M. H and M if you're out there. Sorry, I just randomly picked an email. I wasn't. I wasn't fixing fights. But of course, when I do a focus on one brand, I'm only going to pick an amazing brand. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna put someone through 40 minutes of what not to do. I'm going to put them through 40 minutes of what to do. Love it.
- [23:54]
B
If I don't talk to you, have a very happy holidays, very merry Christmas down in Mexico.
- [23:58]
A
Yeah, you too. Talk to you later.
- [24:05]
B
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the D2C newsletter, you can subscribe for free at Direct to Consumer Co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer no filler services, take off to Pilothouse Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.