[NicolasGorden]

Marketing guy here.

75%-80% open rate for many of my campaigns tells me the title is misleading, those pixels are firing in all the major providers.

Putting people in email/SMS funnels based on which emails they read is ENOURMOUSLY beneficial to my clients.

This is something that's really very basic.

Client Sells Widgets. He sends 3 emails to email base on small widgets, green widgets and cheap widgets.

If the client opens one of these but not the other, does it not make sense to send further information that is relevant to their interest? I mean, if they open the green widgets email on my funnel, they will be getting A LOT MORE green widget emails because they will be moved from funnel to funnel based on their activity or lack thereof.

Good email tracking is part of good marketing. Something I do see commonly is tech founders looking down on marketing. This leads to low budgets and attracting low quality candidates. Modern marketing tools are like machine guns. And most marketing people are like chimps. So that's why you see silly emails like 'I see you are opening my email, why don't you answer' - which is insane from a marketing point of view, why creep people out? So silly.

Good open rate data gathering results in you not knowing that it's being tracked. You simply get more targeted stuff and less stuff that is outside your interest.

Back in 01 when I started in digital marketing, good attribution of sales and marketing was something people spent 7 digits creating custom solutions. Now we can string a few SAAS providers together and get amazing details. It just needs to be set up intelligently.

Having said all of this: of course I don't allow images to display by default on my email provider. But I'm privacy minded and most people aren't. Which is fine, the world is diverse and that's a good thing. I love choice.

[prutschman]

> Good open rate data gathering results in you not knowing that it's being tracked

At some level you know that people react badly when they know they're being tracked, so it's important to help ensure they are not aware of the tracking.

> Having said all of this: of course I don't allow images to display by default on my email provider. But I'm privacy minded and most people aren't. Which is fine, the world is diverse and that's a good thing. I love choice.

You don't like being tracked. You make a living tracking others, or helping others to do so. You think it's important to not let people discover that they're being tracked. Then you rationalize it as people making the "choice" to be tracked.

There may be an internally consistent case to be made that this is above board and ethical, but you haven't made it.

[panic]

The problem is consent. People think of email like regular mail. They don't understand that you're able to track them every time they open a message. The reason people are creeped out by "I see you are opening my email" is because the tracking itself is unexpected and unwanted.

[NicolasGorden]

I support organizations like EPIC and EFF. I tell people all the time in my life to support causes like these and get made fun of.

> The reason people are creeped out by "I see you are opening my email" is because the tracking itself is unexpected and unwanted

Yes, but there's no reason to be, tracking is well known for anyone who wants to know it. A google search is not a high barrier to obtaining information. And it's not my clients obligation to inform the public. You can make a case that schools should teach this. That public officials should spread it. That non profits promote it. That the media should mention it more.

To argue that my client producing widgets is not disclosing it further than they already do in the Privacy policy, in the disclaimers in emails and in their terms and conditions... is IMO unreasonable.

The reason I don't mention "I see you are opening my emails" is because it makes people uncomfortable. Which is why this topic isn't in the news. To blame a small business owner producing quality widgets and their marketing guys for the society we create jointly is immature at best.

I do my part on my dime and my time. I'm not going to feel guilty or apologize for providing value to businesses that provide value. I live and work within the constrains of the real world and actively try to make those constrains better. I don't think it's reasonable to expect more of people.

[dudul]

> The reason I don't mention "I see you are opening my emails" is because it makes people uncomfortable.

So you do acknowledge that it is creepy and undesired, and your solution instead of not doing it is just to not mention it but do it anyway. Classy.

> To blame a small business owner producing quality widgets and their marketing guys for the society we create jointly is immature at best.

We're not doing that jointly buddy. You are the one doing it and you only get away with it by trying to hide it as you mentioned just above.

[NicolasGorden]

> So you do acknowledge that it is creepy and undesired, and your solution instead of not doing it is just to not mention it but do it anyway. Classy

My solution is to use standard industry practices while supporting non profits and politics that improve the overall ecosystem.

It's what adults do. But I guess attacking strangers on the internet is where true class comes from?

> We're not doing that jointly buddy. You are the one doing it and you only get away with it by trying to hide it as you mentioned just above.

The only reason I'm doing it is because it's industry standard practice and it works. You can't bring a knife to a gun fight. Acting like that can happen just shows me you aren't well engaged with the real world. Insinuating my small business clients should not segment email audiences while their competitors do it is just unrealistic and disconnected from how the world operates.

Real world people who actually care about privacy and not grandstanding or throwing rocks in an effort to virtue signal... they actually sign up at EPIC and EFF and contact senators and congressman about specific privacy legislation. At least that's what I do to improve the situation. What do you do that I should be doing to improve our situation in relationship to privacy?

[ubermonkey]

>And it's not my clients obligation to inform the public.

This is why people don't like marketers.

[shuckles]

What if I don’t think Mr. Marketer has a god given right to help me receive more relevant emails, and I would like a way to indicate that preference to my mail client which downloads emails on my behalf from a mail server I pay good money for? How does the current email tracking infrastructure facilitate this preference? What actual choice do users have in this matter today?

Until we actually figure out these questions outside of layering hacks (i.e. “block image subresources entirely”), it seems like we should definitely put a pause on the whole effort.

[robertlagrant]

You're missing the point. Tracking gives you numbers, but they are not accurate numbers. Your clients think they're beneficial because they don't know the numbers aren't accurate. Building funnels on top of bad data is not impressive.

[NicolasGorden]

All data is inaccurate to some degree. This is not new.

There are ways to mitigate false positives, and many of the best SAAS work tirelessly to constantly incorporate every new update and every new technique to try and correct data to make it as clean as possible. The techniques are many and I'm generally not on the cutting edge of that particular niche. But I know people who are.

And it only has to be accurate enough to be profitable.

If I get it right 80% of the time and increase CLV by 30% while increasing marketing costs by a small amount, that's an objective win.

We're not sending people to Mars. And even then, every measurement has a margin of error. It's the inherent nature of measurements.

[tatersolid]

> 75%-80% open rate for many of my campaigns

You don’t actually ever have anything close to that. The big marketing automation platforms apply “correction factors” because most mail clients block images by default.

Create a seed list of 100 emails you control, make sure you open exactly one of your test emails, and watch your “marketing automation” tool lie to you when it comes to open rates.

[beervirus]

> which is insane from a marketing point of view, why creep people out

It's just as creepy even if you don't send the dumb email followup.