Subscriber acquisition best practices following Gmail’s spam update

Gmail’s new spam guidelines have put email and CRM marketers in a bit of a pickle. Responsible list management to stay under spam thresholds means that subscriber volume will likely decrease over time.

As if that dynamic weren’t enough of a challenge, iOS 15 continues to throw a wrench into the works — any marketers using open rates to measure engagement are trying to make sense of a murky picture.

To adapt to these new realities, here are some effective approaches for list management, subscriber acquisition and personalization in your email program.

Post-acquisition list management

Generally speaking, there are two main initiatives that we recommend brands put into play for new subscribers: 

1. Set (or tighten) standards for when to remove people from ongoing sends

New subscribers who haven’t yet established a record of engagement are your riskiest segment, recency-wise. For this reason, it’s critical to have good practices to identify both early engagers and non-engagers. Relegate the latter into a slow warm-up campaign quicker than they might have a year ago before the guidelines were published.

For example, if you used to wait a year for users to engage, consider segmenting them into non-engagement lists in six months. In other words, if you’re going to fail, fail fast to mitigate your spam risk.

As you build systems to identify engaged and non-engaged users, remember that iOS 15 has made open rates unreliable. Gmail users checking their mail on iPhones won’t register accurate open rates. I highly recommend using click metrics instead. Those engagements are more scarce, but you can rely on the data more confidently.

2. Set up stronger automations based on user engagement.

Automations are key for moving new subscribers definitively into an engaged segment. Setting up automations based on types of engagement (e.g., site visits, products viewed, recipes viewed for CPG brands) can help you increase the value of the messages you’re sending to your new users.

This creates a nice, positive cycle: the larger your list of engaged users gets, the more often you can send them messages — and the more latitude you have to drive new customer acquisition.

Dig deeper: The email marketer’s guide to effective marketing automation

Using acquisition to balance subscriber erosion 

The downside of setting up your system to fail fast is that you’re willingly opening yourself to subscriber decreases. The good news is that being more sure about your standards and giving yourself firm guardrails means you can get more aggressive about new subscriber acquisition.

Once your tighter standards are in place, I recommend setting a revised acquisition target. For instance, try to grow your list by 10% in the next month and monitor how things shake out. Without a system to segment unengaged users and balance the loss with acquisition, you’ll set yourself up to dump a bunch of users all at once when you get red-flagged for spam. 

List acquisition and strict segmentation is an evergreen, regenerative approach that will smooth out any peaks and valleys — and keep you out of tough conversations with your leadership team. It also means you can take a responsible approach to acquisition instead of relying on shortcuts like list-sharing and list-buying, which leads to irrelevant users and higher spam risks.

Dig deeper: 3 keys for better email engagement in Gmail

The role of personalization in adherence to spam guidelines

Your single biggest ally in keeping new users in your engaged segment is personalization — both in terms of the content of your messages and when you’re sending those messages. 

Make sure you’re using a welcome series to capture signals that help you build a profile and personalize emails accordingly. For instance, if a user interacts with family-oriented or kid-oriented content, make sure you’re capturing that information to use in future sends.

You can put preference centers into play to ask users to give you their interests proactively, but very few people will give you that info. It doesn’t really move the needle as much as systems in place that are picking up their cues.

Double down on acquisition, retention and personalization

If none of the above advice is particularly earth-shattering, good — it’s gleaned from best email marketing practices. That said, even though it’s logical advice, it’s rare that we see brands coming to us with those fundamentals firmly in place.

Use this as a cue to take a hard look at your list segmentation systems, your automations and personalizations and your reliance on open rates. My hunch is that you’ll find plenty of ways to improve your odds of staying on the right side of Gmail’s guidelines.

 Dig deeper: 3 keys for better email engagement in Gmail