Marketers at retail brands have new obstacles on the horizon: While third-party cookie tracking already underwent massive privacy changes with iOS 14.5 that limited brands’ ability to communicate with leads and customers, next month, email service providers like GoogleGOOG and Yahoo are rolling out new spam protection requirements for bulk senders who send more than 5,000 messages in a day.
Increased validation requirements for bulk senders come with a requirement for one-click unsubscription and severe punishment for senders who have more than 0.3% of emails sent marked as spam. Those who don’t comply will be blacklisted across Gmail and Yahoo mail, meaning their emails will cease to be delivered.
Melissa Berger, Chief Solutions Officer at media company Digitas, believes brands need to become more comfortable with the fact that consumers have more power and, therefore, have to respect the opportunity to communicate with them.
“The one non-technical requirement that’s most concerning, especially for retailers, is maintaining low spam rates. Retailers tend to send a lot of emails because they often lead to more sales in the short term,” she said. “While inbox providers have always had the ability to block a sender because of complaints, this is the first time they’ve established a specific metric as the threshold.”
Much like the cookie tracking changes impaired traditional customer acquisition efforts, this shift may have a similar negative impact on customer retention efforts.
One report shows that as many as two-thirds of businesses indicate email marketing is a top three revenue-generating marketing channel, meaning these changes could have critical implications when it comes to non-compliance.
However, in the Shopify ecosystem, tools like Novel Commerce are working to help brands overcome these new hurdles. Novel’s wallet pass technology allows brands using Shopify to interact with shoppers through their Google and AppleAAPL Wallets.
By turning on Novel Commerce’s wallet pass functionality on the back end of their stores, brands can utilize push notifications, incentivize loyalty and referral programs with QR codes, and stay in touch with customers—all of which work to lower customer acquisition costs and boost lifetime value.
“Friction is the key problem brands have in their retention relationship today,” said Ismail Pathan, Head of Partnerships at Novel. “Their website is built for acquisition and traditional engagement channels are becoming increasingly compromised. Novel works to provide a solution for both of these issues, giving retention programs a new home that comes with a native communication channel.”
Because the wallet pass works via Google and Apple Wallets, reach isn’t limited by social media algorithms or paid advertising spend, either. This allows brands using the tool to connect with a wider customer base without the restrictions of traditional marketing mediums like email, SMS, and social networks.
The tech also works to help brands incentivize secondary purchases—an objective that’s currently top-of-mind for brands working to spur sales among the cohort of shoppers who made a first-time purchase during the holiday shopping season.
These re-engagement efforts can be conducted in omnichannel contexts, as Novel’s wallet passes work both for in-store purchases as well as online.
From geo-fenced offers that activate when a shopper is near a brick-and-mortar store to push notifications triggered by specific moments in an online shopper’s customer journey, having the marketing efforts tied to the device rather than marketing or social platforms opens new opportunities for retailers.
Early adopters are finding success using this approach. For example, luxury leather goods brand Ghurka began using Novel Commerce’s wallet pass technology in November of 2023 and saw a 114% year-over-year lift in Black Friday revenue through a combination of efforts that included referrals and push notification campaigns.
“Novel has provided a tremendously valuable and cost-effective way to personalize communication and shopping incentives to any and all segments of our customer base,” said Max Milstein, Head of Ecommerce Strategy at Ghurka.
In another use case, beverage brand Liquid Death used Novel Commerce’s wallet pass as proof of access for a live event, which then enabled the brand to stay in touch with and re-engage those participants post-event.
“What excites me is that while we’re able to safeguard a brand’s retention marketing in the ecom space, we’re really just getting started. We’re going to fill the gap that exists today between a brand’s retail and ecom customers, letting brands leverage their whole retention strategy in a retail setting for the first time,” said Akhil Ramgopal, Head of Product at Novel.
As data privacy concerns continue to increase among consumers and governing bodies, we can expect more changes down the pipeline that further complicate traditional approaches to marketing.
The good news is that innovative options like Novel’s wallet pass tech present retailers with possible workarounds and opportunities for optimization that can work in tandem with these new email deliverability requirements.
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