Jay Schwedelson: We are back for What's Up This Week from the Do This, Not That podcast, and there is some, like, earth-shattering stuff going on in the world of email. If your company sends out any email of any kind, business, consumer, doesn't matter. And I re- really wanna break down if it is a big deal or if it's not a big deal, and that is, are open rates...

Is open rate tracking on email campaigns gonna be illegal? What? Yeah, this is what's going on. So I'll tell you how we got here, and I'm gonna tell you the impact it's gonna have here in the United States. So you probably aren't following this because it's really nerdy stuff. But in both France and Italy, they both passed laws months ago, uh, that are actually going into effect July 14th.

So in a few days, right? So it's going into effect July 14th, and what basically the laws are, that they both already passed, is that, of course, in Europe, you need to get explicit permission to be able to email somebody. But now, in France and Italy specifically, you're gonna need to have explicit permission to actually track if somebody opened up an email.

You're gonna need explicit permission to be able to give that person that open tracking pixel that we drop on people when they open up an email. So just to back up a second. When you send out an email, right, whatever platform you use, the way that they know if you opened up an email or not is this tracking pixel that they use, right?

And that's what's done in every email that goes out. And so what has been the case in Europe specifically is, oh, somebody consents to getting, uh, email, right? Um, the understanding was that because they consented, that they are-- the marketer is also allowed to track the activity of the person doing stuff in the email, if they opened it or whatever they did.

All right? But now, in France and Italy, which goes into effect July 14th, you are gonna need explicit permission to be able to not only send them an email, but then to track whether or not the person opens the email. So people are saying, "Oh, wow, this is it. The open rate is finally going to die." Now, here's my two cents, okay?

Is the open rate gonna die because of all of this? Uh, no. It is-- Open rate tracking is not gonna die because of all this, not even a little bit, and then I wanna talk about the impact it has here in the United States. So first off, why won't it die? Open, uh, this, people will say open rate's meaningless, it doesn't mean anything.

Of c- listen, open rate is not somebody buying a product. Open rate is not somebody requesting a demo. It is an upfront metric. It is a directional metric. All right? It is not an absolute metric. What I mean by that is, uh, e- every o- anyw- if any open rate that you look at, you go into whatever system you use. This is, oh, I sent out an email campaign, I got a 40% open rate. No you didn't, okay? Because listen, there's the a- Apple's inflating opens, there's bots that's inflating opens. There's so many things that are inflating opens in your tracking, that whatever report you're using, it's inflated. Newsflash, we've known this for a while.

But directionally, it's very valuable, right? So if you do an A/B test on a subject line and one, you know, uh, uh, is a question mark subject line and one doesn't, and the one with the question mark subject line, one gets a 50% open rate, the other one gets a 30% open rate. Okay, the one with the question mark did better.

It's directional. You have directional information. So now people are saying, "Oh Well, because of what's going on in France and Italy, does... And we'll get to the US in a second, does that mean that directional open rate tracking is dead there? I don't believe it is. 'Cause here's what I think is going to happen.

What's going to happen is, as there is with every type of thing when you're asking people for permission, there is always a significant statistically relevant portion of people that say, "Yes, you can track me. Yes, you could put that pixel i-in my whatever. Yes, you can give me a cookie." People opt into this stuff 'cause they like getting stuff.

They also have no idea what... They don't read anything. They go, "Check, check, check, check, check." So there's going to be a statistically relevant number of people that in Italy and France are gonna say, "Yes, you can still give me pixels in my email." So let's say in the database in Italy and France, it's, you know, 20% of the people in your database.

Amazing. Okay? And then you're only able to really get that directional information on 20% of your database. You are then going to extrapolate that out and say, "Oh, well, this test that I ran, okay, where I got a, a higher open rate on this day instead of this day, great. I know it's only 20% of my database, but I...

that's enough data for me to believe that to be true for all the data. I'll use that as the best day to send my email." So it's going to take us further down the rabbit hole, in my opinion, of directional usage of open rate tracking, knowing that the absolute metric of open rates is beyond flawed. Now, is that gonna come to the United States?

And the answer is absolutely not, and here's why. Um, I'm not saying it shouldn't, I'm just saying it won't. So there has been no meaningful federal, uh, email legislation since CAN-SPAM, like, a zillion years ago, and CAN-SPAM is a negative option law that doesn't get into any of this stuff. There's been a lot of patchwork laws out there from different states covering different things, but it is like the Wild West out there as it relates to this patchwork of different state laws.

And until there is federal legislation as it relates to email, it's gonna be very, very, very hard for this to be, um, something that really impacts marketers and whether or not they use open rate metrics here in the United States. It's the same thing with AI laws, right? Um, it's very difficult to get... And this is not a...

Uh, please don't leave a comment about politics. I don't care. It doesn't matter who you like or whatever. Across the board, it is very hard to get any federal legislation related to, uh, privacy and marketing-related activities passed. It just is. So I don't expect this to come to the US anytime soon, but it is something we all need to be, uh, aware of, of what's going on out there.

So I don't wanna make this episode too long, so I'll share some other very small irrelevant things that are going on, and then I wanna get to ridiculous nonsense that's going on. So, so some of the other cool things that are going on out there Reddit finally announced this week the ability to do split testing, um, for the ads that you run there.

You can now actually run split tests on Reddit with the different ad vehicles. If you're not spending time looking at the new ad units that Reddit's been rolling out... I don't work for Reddit, we're just seeing it perform really, really well, and now that you can do split testing and run two ad variants at any time, I think people are sleeping on Reddit and running Reddit ads.

They're crushing it. Um, okay, I'm gonna jump right to it. Screw this. Before we get into, uh, the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I wanna let you know that this podcast, this episode is sponsored by CallRail. You're like, "CallRail? What do they do? You make phone calls?" No. They are the tool used by hundreds of thousands of businesses, okay, to really measure your attribution and to use AI.

What do I mean by that? People go to your forums, they fill them out. People do call your company, right? They leave... They, they reach out to people. They, they're, they're coming in through all these different paid ads that you're running. Is it working? Is it not working? I don't know. That is what CallRail does.

If you go to callrail.com/dothis, they have a free trial. You could try this for free. My company uses it. This is how we do our attribution tracking. Go to callrail.com/dothis for the free trial. It is awesome. Check it out. All right, let's see what's going on that's complete nonsense You don't care about Love Island, but you should.

This is the greatest show of all time. I'm j- I just gotta get it out of my system. Okay? It's almost over. It's gonna be over on July 12th, I believe. I'm rooting for Casey and Tierra, and Melanie and Insincere. I don't call him Sincere. That's his name. His name is Sincere. This guy's name is Sincere. Can you believe they have a guy on the show whose name is Sincere?

Okay. And then he cheated on the girl that he's with, like, three times, and he, and, and the girl is still staying with him. What is wrong with people? So I call him Insincere. He is not sincere. I am not rooting for him. I am also not gonna be watching Silo Season 3 that just came out on Apple TV, sci-fi show.

I do not like shows that go backwards in time, that go backwards and forwards, and backwards and forwards. I also don't like that in books. It's like you ever read a book, and then, you know, you're in this chapter, and then the next chapter will say, "Four years ago." I'm like, "I wanna stay in the moment. I don't want the backstory."

I want it... I, I, I also don't like movie prequels. I don't want backstory. I wanna go forward. What are we doing now? So the whole Season 3 of Silo is, like, a backstory, which is garbage. Um, what else is garbage, which I'm gonna get hate for, is that which is also coming out in about a week, is Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro.

Dancing with the Stars is jumping the shark. They're doing a reality show, okay, about how they're gonna find the next dancer to be a pro on the show, and it's hosted by Robert Irwin. Love that dude. He should just be the next pro. That guy was incredible. But this is where they jumped the shark. They're going to, like, reality TV.

By the way, does everyone know the story of jump the shark? Nobody cares. I'm gonna tell you right now So for people my age, when something gets cheesy or dorky or not cool anymore, we say this phrase, "Oh, it jumped the shark." Like I just said, Dancing with the Stars jumped the shark. Now, um, you don't know where this came from, this phrase, but I'm gonna tell you.

So back in the day, there was a show called Happy Days, which I used to watch, and there was a character on there named The Fonz who wore this leather jacket, okay? And The Fonz was like the coolest character ever. And in one episode of Happy Days, they did a trip to Hawaii. Yes. And they did a trip to Hawaii, and The Fonz was water skiing, and there was a shark in the water.

And when The Fonz was water skiing, in order to get over the shark, he went over this ramp, and he literally jumped the shark, and he saved the day. And then right after the episode aired, that's what happened. Everyone j- basically, that's when that show became garbage, when he jumped the shark, and then that became the phrase that we all say of when something is not cool, jumped the shark.

So this is meaningless information that is in my brain, that is now in your brain, and I don't know what you could do with that. But if you do wanna do something, I will tell you what you should do. If you have not picked up a copy of my book, Stupider People Have Done It, all of the author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

We just-- We've made a donative-- donation of $130,000. This thing went to the bestseller list across the country, USA Today bestseller. It's not about me. I don't care about that. What I care about is I wanna make more donations to the V Foundation. Pick up Stupider People Have Done It. Drop me an email. Leave a review. Jump the shark. I have no idea. We'll see you at the next one