Forms for lead generation and advertising email registrations are an exchange of values between B2B marketers and their target groups.
In exchange for research and other content, B2B brands hope to …
- Improve how form completers think of their brand and hopefully spur them on to potential conversion
- Identify the form fillers and the companies they represent, then combine filling out the form with other actions by those people to determine their interest through lead scoring
- Build an ongoing relationship with form fillers as they sign up to receive branded promotional messages
However, if people put a non-corporate email address on a lead gen or email sign up form, it can undermine those last two goals. This enables B2B marketers to decide whether it is still worthwhile for them to accept these email addresses.
Some have decided it doesn’t, and that stock is likely to grow as Apple rolls out a new and improved feature for hiding my email this fall.
Apple’s Hide My Email
Hide My Email is a paid feature that is advertised alongside Mail Privacy Protection. It allows users to simply enter a unique, randomly generated icloud.com email address into the email field of any form.
This email address can only be used for the app or website that the user is creating it for. Any email sent to this address will be redirected to the email account selected by the user. However, the user can deactivate this relay address at any time, which results in all emails sent to this address being hard-sent back.
Relay addresses are therefore right next to temporary email addresses in terms of risk. While these relay addresses differ from temporary email addresses in that they don’t expire after a period of time or after a series of uses, they still pose a potential threat to marketers for two reasons:
- First, the person’s identity is masked. Since each relay address is unique, it will never be assigned to any of your other customers or prospects. However, it will never be associated with the person who shared it with you, either. If that person uses Hide My Email again to provide an email address, your company will have a completely new relay address, making it difficult for you to identify these activities as originating from the same person.
- Second, the person could potentially compromise your deliverability by turning off the relay, which would result in the next email sent to the address being hard resent. This also happens when marketers send email to expired temporary email accounts. And just like too many spam complaints, too many hard bounces can affect your deliverability. Once your hard bounce rate exceeds 2% on a monthly basis, the likelihood of your email being junked or blocked by mailbox providers increases.
A turning point ahead? Then what?
To use Hide My Email, users need a paid iCloud account. While this will limit adoption a little, the cheapest iCloud accounts only cost $ 2.99 per month and hundreds of millions of Apple users already have paid accounts. And since Hide My Email is far more convenient than temporary email address services, marketers could see hard bounces on icloud.com email addresses steadily increasing through late 2021 and 2022.
Additionally, if companies have hard bounce rates of around 2%, adopting Hide My Email could put them in danger and force them to act.
What could some of these actions be?
First, you can stop accepting email addresses with domains used by temporary email address providers. Even if you want to give your prospects and customers the option to use the email address of their choice, it’s okay to prohibit them from using an address that might interfere with your ability to communicate with your other subscribers and customers. Finally, you need to take care of the health of your entire email program.
Second, you can also stop accepting icloud.com email addresses, which are likely to be less than 1% of your saved email addresses. While existing ones are fine, new ones could be blocked if you encounter harmful negative behavior originating from Hide My Email. Keep an eye on your icloud.com addresses for the year ahead and see what percentage of them are bouncing hard. When bounces get out of hand, be ready to act.
third, you can stop accepting all email addresses outside of the company. This is a solution that only B2B brands can benefit from, but even for them there are some significant drawbacks besides the professionals to consider.
The professionals:
- Better identification of individuals and companies so you can see if you are reaching your target audience
- Better lead scoring and lead nurturing capabilities as you have a reliable business email address from the person
- Potentially improved deliverability through fewer hard bounces of temporary email addresses and Hide My Email icloud.com addresses
The disadvantages:
- Alienation from small businesses, freelancers, and independent consultants who all use a personal email address rather than their primary business address
- Fewer content downloads, which means fewer brand impressions and fewer opportunities to interact with a prospect
- Slower list growth
And fourth, you can only perform one of the above actions on certain forms. Depending on your goals, hard bounce rates, and the behavior of your audience, you may only be able to block icloud.com email addresses in your content download forms, but allow them for your newsletter subscription, for example.
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Privacy will continue to be a major issue that marketers will have to adapt to. However, brands shouldn’t lose sight of the need to balance the needs of their customers with the needs of their business. If new privacy-conscious behaviors are jeopardizing the health of your email program, don’t feel bad about protecting it by changing the types of email addresses your company accepts.
More resources on B2B email strategy
Four types of email addresses that are affecting your deliverability and what to do about them
Email Responsiveness: Build Trust, Sell More (and More Frequently) [Infographic]
Building your email newsletter is a marathon, not a sprint
