Luke Glasner on email marketing’s future: Accessibility, AI deliverability systems, and the rise of modular omnichannel platforms

In this insightful interview with email marketing consultant Luke Glasner, we deep dive into some of the hottest topics shaping the email marketing industry today. Luke shares expert strategies and forward-thinking solutions for integrating accessibility into interactive email designs, staying ahead of deliverability trends, and the evolving role of email platforms in omnichannel marketing. 

This conversation provides invaluable guidance for marketers looking to refine their approach and achieve impressive results.

Luke Glasner has been working in email marketing for over 15 years. He founded Glasner Consulting in August 2009 to help clients with email marketing strategies and analyses. Known for his work in email metrics, Luke led the SAME Project, an industry initiative aimed at creating and adopting industry standards for email metrics at the Email Experience Council (EEC). There, he was co-chair of the Measurement Accuracy Advisory Board from 2008 to 2012 and co-chair of the list growth committee from 2006 to 2012. 

Luke has also served as a judge for the DMA/ANA ECHO Awards since 2011 and for the MMA’s Smarties Awards from 2015 to 2019. Luke Glasner earned his Master of Science in Integrated Marketing at New York University, concentrating on marketing analytics. Before NYU, Luke earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Adapting to privacy regulations and enhancing email metrics

Stripo: As a member of the Only Influencers’ Email Metrics Project Committee, please discuss this topic. With evolving privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, how should marketers adapt their email metrics to maintain accurate tracking and reporting?

Luke: This is difficult for marketers to do, as it is really more of an issue facing ESPs or providers than email marketers. What email marketers can do is find out how these issues affect their reporting and consider that when making decisions.

These questions should be asked during an RFP or vendor selection to inform decision-making. I would caution marketers against tactics like honeypot links to ID machine-driven clicks by subscribers, as that would require you to obscure text or content, which can cause issues with delivering to the inbox.

ESPs can improve accuracy by removing likely inaccurate or machine-driven activity rather than human-driven.

The metrics most impacted by this are opens and open rates inflated by Apple’s MPP. While opens are no longer accurate, they can still be useful.

Sometimes, a message not really reaching the inbox is very clear. During a recent warm-up, I saw one day that Yahoo and Google had open rates above 70%. The next day, we sent the next batch in the warm-up to migrate over the list. We saw an open rate of 5%, so we went from over 70% opening to 5% with no bounces. That campaign was junked. We also know it was driven by audience selection, not the creative, since we used the same email for both sends.

S: With the vast amount of data available to marketers, what are some innovative ways to visualize email marketing data that can lead to actionable insights and more strategic decision-making?

L: While I would report on common email metrics like clicks, use the visualization to focus on your business KPIs. Calculate and display metrics, such as revenue per email, conversion rate by delivered and clicked, AOV, customer acquisition via email, and customer vs. subscriber unsubscribes. Show how these change over time, not necessarily campaign to campaign, but weekly, monthly, and year over year. 

Are we doing better this year than last year? If so, that’s a great story to report. If not, why? Use the visualization to focus on problems such as not converting as many subscribers into customers or our unsubscribe rate for customers increasing over time, showing that we are losing our audience’s interest.

Another concern is simply making the visualization easy to read: use bigger fonts, distinct colors for each metric, single KPI metrics instead of a chart, and so on. 

Good data for successful hyper-segmentation and personalization 

S: How can marketers balance hyper-segmentation while maintaining a scalable email marketing strategy? What issues do you see with segmentation and personalization in email marketing?

L: The biggest problem I encounter with my clients is data hygiene. There are often issues with uniform formatting, accuracy, coverage, and so on. I see this, especially with form data, where subscribers enter the data directly, such as in email sign-up forms. 

To combat this issue, start with real-time validation of your forms. 

1. Even minimal tools that check for common typos can make a world of difference. If your sign-up doesn’t check that the email address is correct, you can lose many interested people who never get their welcome emails because they made a simple typo.
2. Another one I see a lot of is junk entries on things like first name when required, or the first name is blank. It’s hard to start basic personalization when 80% of the subscriber base has a first name of “drfaomeqafuqao” or “   .”

Maximizing email interactivity: AMP benefits, creative strategies, and pitfalls to avoid

S: AMP for email offers new opportunities for interactivity within emails. Is it worth the investment, or should marketers focus on other ways to enhance interactivity? And what are the potential drawbacks of relying heavily on AMP?

L: I do think that learning AMP for email is worth it. While some things like RSVPs are simple, they are also powerful. Gamification and interesting content will keep people opening and interacting with emails, even if they are not in-market. That’s important to keep up engagement between orders, or until we convince them to make that first purchase. 

The biggest drawback to AMP is the lack of universal support, not only for inboxes but also for ESPs. That means there’s a point where the time to produce the email with AMP versions outweighs the return in delays or labor costs. For example, if I outsource creating emails to another person, I have to pay more for them to make AMP versions plus HTML or text versions, or my team cannot. If the boost in engagement doesn’t translate into sales, you may break even or even lose money on production. 

There is a potential opportunity cost, but I think AMP is worth it. Using a tool is a good way to get into AMP with minimal risk. But I think that even if you use no-code tools, there’s value in reading the code yourself.

S: Besides AMP, what other strategies can marketers use to introduce interactivity into emails? What, in your view, are three effective interactive elements that are easiest to implement in email?

L: One-click ratings and star reviews are pretty easy to implement and can improve the matching of content and subscribers or audience as you learn their interests and likes. They can also help drive clicks if a person is interested in buying.

Visual CSS effects are effective, but I am not sure they are the easiest. It’s not super hard, but making it work across platforms can be time-consuming. At the Email Innovations Summit, Justin Khoo talked about using forms in email to drive responses and engagement.

S: Kinetic emails offer unique interactive experiences. What are some key considerations and potential pitfalls when designing kinetic emails? Why do you think CSS effects are still rarely used? 

L: Rendering them across clients is difficult, and support is not universal. For example, I used to like hover effects in my emails, but as mobile technology took over, they stopped being effective. There’s no mouse on mobile, so getting a hover or mouseover effect to fire is limited to desktop users, who are no longer the majority.

I still use my falling or rising animations, such as fireworks, and around the holidays, I use a snowing effect in emails. You can change that code from white to yellow and reverse the direction to make it look like floating champagne bubbles. Once you have an effect worked out, it’s easy to troubleshoot. 

The biggest hurdle is whether it will work for my clients’ audience, especially Gmail, which usually has the most subscribers of any client. Microsoft clients don’t support CSS effects well, so you must make them your version or hide the animation. Snowflakes, for example, can cause problems in Outlook, especially older versions, if you don’t code for them or hide them.

Interactivity meets accessibility: Best practices for inclusive email design

S: How can we effectively integrate interactivity with web or email accessibility? What strategies and innovations are necessary for this integration?

L: I think accessibility can be applied to interactivity in the same way you would to any email. You can still use best practices such as larger fonts, alt text, and checking color contrast. Most of the practices for responsive design on smaller screens also work for accessibility concerns: 

1. I check the color contrast for the light and dark modes in my emails. If I had interactive elements, I would still check the color contrast on those elements. I tend to use WebAIM. To check the color contrast, you want a contrast score above 4.51. 
2. Whether it’s an interactive game, a form, or an expanding menu, you still want fonts big enough to read. The same goes for mobile responsiveness, which is at least 14pt. Though I personally tend to use 18–20pt, I rarely include any text anywhere that’s below 16pt, as it’s hard to read. Overall, larger fonts tend to work better. 
3. Finally, one area of accessibility that is often discussed is screen readers. Techniques such as including aria tags and headers instead of just increasing font size can also be applied to elements in the interactive section of the email.

S: When interactive content is not fully accessible, how should we considerately inform website users or email subscribers about interactive elements and provide a thoughtful option to skip such content?

L: While including accessibility from the start will work for most parts of the email, there are times when it simply doesn’t. That’s when we need to inform subscribers about the interactive elements and offer another option: 

• one approach is to treat this similar to a video in email. Video in email doesn’t have good support across clients, so we direct people to the web instead of trying to make it work there. For many interactive elements, you can even use an animated GIF, similar to videos in email. That showcases the element and drives people to the site where it is easier to support accessibility due to the great focus on it historically (even Windows 3.11 had accessibility features) and more standardization; 
• another is to use accessible rich internet application (ARIA) tags on elements to communicate options via screen readers. For example, you may list choices that can be clicked on or advise people to click on the site where they can have a better experience.

Email deliverability and the evolution of ESPs: Staying ahead of the game

S: What emerging trends in email deliverability should marketers be aware of, particularly in relation to new technologies and changing ISP algorithms?

L: While not technological, I think we are starting to understand more and more that deliverability is not simply delivery or the delivered rate, which drives those trends. Based on this, I see two big trends:

1. Inbox placement testing. People turn to services offering inbox placement testing and deliverability or reputation scores to help manage it. I think that will continue as traditional metrics, like opens, become less accurate before a big issue. I could also see AI deliverability systems coming out in the near future, where AI monitors deliverability and alerts people when needed.
2. Filter or bot clicks. We should expect to see more and more spam filters checking links and evaluating the reputation of links in emails. While this is already happening, it has increased quite a bit in the past year or two and is becoming a real problem. On the flip side, we will also see an increase in non-human interactions or engagement created by AI used by marketers to push their engagement up to reach the inbox. So now, our click rates will be inaccurate because we have manufactured engagement and filters both clicking, which results in a lot of noise to add to the metric.

S: You are experienced in 20+ ESPs and can help businesses start using them. What role do you see email platforms play in the future of omnichannel marketing, and how can they help businesses create a seamless customer experience across different touchpoints?

L: Two examples of this are MailChimp and Hubspot, with Hubspot specifically starting as a company focused on content-based websites. But these and others often don’t have direct access to the data—which is often stored in storefront or eCommerce platforms or CRM systems. 

CDPs, which are currently being built from the ground up, have the opportunity to marry data with execution. Perhaps we need a new type of system—a customer marketing platform or CMP—where we have both the data repository and analysis capabilities of CRM or CDPs, along with the execution and orchestration similar to marketing suites. Therefore, all the data, all the channels, and all the content are in one unified platform.

This would allow greater flexibility to customize offerings to buyers without forcing them to buy things they will never use, and it would also allow greater appeal across businesses, from start-ups to enterprises. 

Best of all, data from all these channels will flow back to the system, site analytics, and purchase data. In today’s business environment, where privacy is moving to the forefront, a single trustworthy source is needed to opt-in to email, SMS, and other forms of marketing. This would allow marketers to be more effective while preserving the rights of consumers and business peers.

Wrapping up

We are incredibly grateful to Luke Glasner for sharing his knowledge and experience. This interview provided a wealth of actionable insights for email marketers navigating the interactivity, accessibility, deliverability, and future of email platforms. Here are seven key takeaways to help refine your strategies:

1. With evolving privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, open rates are no longer accurate, but they can still be useful. 
2. Good data are the key to both segmentation and personalization. If your data quality is poor, you would be better off fixing it before adding personalization.
3. Gamification and interesting content will keep people opening and interacting with emails.
4. Accessibility must be built into the design process from the start. This ensures that fonts, colors, and interactive elements meet accessibility standards, allowing all recipients to engage fully with your content.
5. When interactivity cannot be fully accessible, clearly communicate its limitations and provide alternatives, such as directing subscribers to a website. Tools such as ARIA tags can help guide recipients via screen readers.
6. Marketers should embrace inbox placement testing and prepare for AI-driven deliverability systems. Additionally, the rise of non-human engagement and filter clicks will require new ways to evaluate and optimize email performance.
7. Email platforms are evolving into modular, data-integrated systems, such as customer data platforms (CDPs) or customer marketing platforms (CMPs). These systems unify data, content, and channels, allowing for tailored solutions that meet diverse business needs.

By embracing these strategies, email marketers can stay ahead of industry trends, create inclusive experiences, and optimize campaigns for performance and recipients’ satisfaction.