4 big questions for email marketing in 2023

I posted last week about the predictions from Litmus (based in part on research from earlier in the year). It just re-affirmed what we’ve know for over a year about the future of email as a publishing and marketing platform. It’s a great future for readers and customers, but terrible for marketers who took a wait-and-see attitude.

• Open rates are no longer reliable.
• Tracking in the browser will probably also no longer be reliable.
• The reliability of the above will only lessen in the months and years to come.
• Dependable deliverability is likely to decrease due all of the above.

Ask:

1. Why should we trust email analytics?
2. What are email service providers still able to truthfully promise to customers?
3. When are the first lawsuits coming from those who bought into the promises that decreased their open, click-though, and deliverability rates?
4. What should we do now?

My guesses:

1. We shouldn’t.
2. Not much.
3. Small businesses are already angry. When big businesses discover the obvious contradictions, that’s when the gold rush should begin for lawyers.
4. We should do what we always should do. Concentrate on providing value more than asking for value. The rest is out of our control.