I received a cold-call sales email (from a "contact verification solution provider") about a Gmail purge. Has anyone heard anything about this? Are you taking any proactive steps to get ahead of it in case it dramatically spikes hard bounces? I know we discussed re-engagement strategies in general during the Lean Coffee session this week. This news might light a fire on looking at engagement more closely sooner rather than later.
From the emai I recieved:
Heads up email marketers: The Great Gmail Purge starts today! In case you missed it, Google has started deleting email accounts that have been inactive for at least two years. Unfortunately, this adds a new curveball during the busy holiday season.
But don’t panic. Here are a few quick tips to adapt:
verified by ABC news.
abcnews.go.com/.../story
I heard about it in an Oracle webinar on Friday. I'm with Gawain - since Google is just dumping inactive addresses, it shouldn't affect us (especially if we are already isolating inactive emails).
I'm interested to know if people are still writing 'Opens' back to Tessitura, given some of the big email providers are automatically marking emails as 'opened' (I think Apple Mail does this - so you can potentially believe you have a 100% open rate). We're trying to remove people who haven't interacted / clicked on a link in the past 5 years, but I'm interested to know how others are isolating inactive emails. We'll be keeping an eye on our hard bounce numbers tho' in the meantime.
I disabled it as soon as WordFly provided us with an easy option to do so. I also no longer provide Opens as a response stat within any reporting, as it's now more or less only an indicator that an address is still connected to an active inbox--that's not engagement.
Yep indeed!