Happy Leap Year!
After a busy 5-6 weeks in the world of digital marketing, it felt like there was a slight slow-down this week in terms of platform announcements and shenanigans. Nevertheless, there’s still plenty going on – this week I’ve taken a look at the introduction of new automated email rules from Google and Yahoo, and what this means for marketers. Otherwise, there’s more from LinkedIn on its algorithm, a year-on-year increase in both ad spend and CPC, and plenty of juicy stuff in the further reading section.
Google’s new email rulesGoogle and Yahoo have introduced new rules to try and limit the number of automated emails users receive. If your inbox is anything like mine, or 87% of people (according to Gong), then you receive dozens or possibly hundreds of irrelevant automated emails each and every day.Google and Yahoo are putting in place measures to curb this. Yahoo’s rules differ slightly, but Google’s new rules are:
Email authentication is now required using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC (fine, your provider should have these as an option)Single-click unsubscribe is required so that all users can unsubscribe with one click (trickier, but still not difficult)Spam complaint rate limit must stay under 0.3%, or emails risk being sent to spam (this is tricky)
Essentially, if 0.3% of users deem your email to be unworthy of their inbox and worth grumbling about, then you’re likely to fall foul of these issues. Now, if your user-base doesn’t use Gmail or Yahoo, then you’ll probably think you’re in the clear – but frankly, you should be aiming to ensure that 100% of your users find your email to be useful, clear and relevant to their experience.You should ask yourself “do I really need to send this email to this whole list?” and “what value is this email adding to my user?.” We’re going back to the basics of user-centric marketing here – obviously your own business and marketing goals are important, but without thinking about what your user or customer needs, you’re likely to fall short of those.
LinkedIn trying to focus on quality over quantity
There is no shortage of posts on LinkedIn at the moment from people trying to sell themselves, products, or a 4.30am wake–up, celery-based morning routine. The platform is aware of this and I suspect that has received no shortage of feedback stating that much of the content on there is, frankly, nonsense.As such, this year the platform is looking to introduce algorithm changes that mean the best and most-engaged with posts are shared months after the original publication (I suspect with the flywheel of engagement demonstrating whether or not it’s still relevant). My fear here is that most of the nonsense posts will double down on saying anything and adding “what do you think?”, but the intention is right and I’m curious to see how it plays out.It should go without saying but if you continue to create content designed to add value to your user (hey, there’s a theme here), you’ll be fine.
Ad Spend, and CPC, Increased in 2023
One that I missed a few weeks back, but wanted to share – there was an interesting (but at 561 pages, not concise) report this week from a coalition of partners (DataReportal, We Are Social, Meltwater, Semrush and Similarweb among others) filled to the brim with great internet stats and knowledge. I encourage you peruse the report at your leisure, but for me the interesting thing was seeing hard data to back up trends I’ve noticed across a few clients – namely that ad spend is going up, but also that CPC is increasing. Logically this makes sense – more demand, more costly supply – but is nevertheless interesting to see.Away from this, the conclusions were that SEO remains key to ensure your customers can easily find you (something I don’t think any of us were doubting), and that as Search Engines continue to incorporate more social posts, that organic social marketing continues to grow in importance. As I say – we aren’t reinventing the wheel here, but there are some useful facts and stats that might help you back up anecdotal arguments.
Further Reading
News that there remains no news from the Universal/TikTok dispute that felt all-encompassing about three weeks ago.SubStack is getting more social, with the introduction of DMs meaning you’ll be able to engage with your favourite (or, ahem, otherwise) creators – and gives you an alternative to emailing me! At least there’s a logic here, unlike Strava’s bizarre introduction of instant messaging a few months back…Quite interesting to see that Adobe are making serious plays around Gen AI and creativity, this time in the audio space with Project Music which can generate audio using text prompts.Finally, something a bit juicer – a court filing alleges that The NY Times paid someone to hack OpenAI to plant evidence to enable it to bring its own lawsuit. Potentially messy and one to watch.
That’s it! If you enjoyed this article, then please feel free to tell your friends, say hello or if you’re feeling particularly generous, to buy me a coffee.