Dot Club will now count opens and clicks

The Dot Club newsletter will now be counting opens and clicks by default. Big whoop, I hear you say, since this is considered standard practice for email newsletters. But I���d turned it off in April 2022 and have been on the fence about it since, only turning it on over Aug���Dec of this year to do some email housekeeping.

Which went well, by the way. And from it emerged some first-hand lessons that have me feeling more comfortable about re-adopting a bit of tracking for my newsletter.

Grab a cup of tea and enjoy the full story. Or scroll to the end if you just want a summary.

Why I turned off tracking

I don���t like tracking. I���ve seen it done badly too many times to count, even worked for people who took the view that one should collect as much data as possible about ���the audience���, in case one can ���use it later���.

Now that I���m a bit (a lot) older and willing to go further in questioning conventional wisdom, I���m pretty sure that line of thinking is a recipe for disaster. Even if clever security folks were able to neutralise the threat of data theft, there���s still a non-trivial amount of effort, hard drive space, and energy that most likely goes to waste.

From Wholegrain Digital���s Digital Declutter for Businesses: Digital Marketing:

All the information that we exchange online is data. The further the data travel, the more energy they consume. A study conducted as part of an investigation by Channel 4���s ���Dispatches��� current affairs program found out that a single Instagram post from Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo to his 240 million followers consumes as much energy as ten UK households for one year! Although most of us don���t have the same outreach as Cristiano Ronaldo, all our digital activities have small carbon footprints that add up to the global issue.

Data have become the new gold. However, not everyone knows how to use them properly. Many businesses set up tracking throughout their websites but rarely actually look into the collected data, understand what they mean, and make any necessary changes. So if you collect data on your website but don���t have any use for them, consider switching off that tracking. The fewer data we collect, the less energy we consume.

Anyway, I panicked. I switched to an email provider who would let me turn off tracking AND create a minimalist email to reduce the unnecessary kilobytes I was shooting across the world. Finding one in early 2022 was not a straightforward job. By the way, this is the same panic that drove me to adopt the practice of retiring blog posts.

I needed time to think about the purpose of all the information and content we generate and share online; which ���standard practices��� are legitimately standard (and which ones are only standard cos some random internet man said so); and what my actions and decisions as an author and a business owner mean to me.

Why I���m turning it back on

The last few months taught me a few things, namely where my boundaries are, which of my assumptions were too over-the-top, and when it���s safe to step back from the ledge.

I turned tracking on from August to December (and included a note in each issue because this practice strayed from the default), and used the information to figure out if the outcome of my actions were actually aligned to my values.

This housekeeping project revealed 2 things:

First was that I was sending a lot of unnecessary emails, about 500 every month, to subscribers who weren���t actually interested in hearing from me. I suspect most were bots, people���s old email addresses, and freebie tasters who just forgot to unsubscribe.

If a standard email costs the equivalent of 4g of CO2 (about a teaspoon of sugar), then I���ve basically been throwing out 5 Starbucks grande cups of sugar every month for no good reason. Except it���s not sugar, it���s carbon dioxide at a time where environmentalists are telling us to ease up on excess emissions. Sorry, Planet Earth, this was not part of the plan.

The second revelation was that turning on tracking DIDN���T suddenly hook me up to creepy levels of personal information in some dystopian Hunger Games adtech arena. I���ve realised there���s a world of difference between light, purpose-driven tracking and the data surveillance hellscape that oozes over social media and the modern web, and doing one doesn���t oblige us to the other.

All I wanted was enough info to make Dot Club function better, no more, no less. And I got exactly that.

I did a big declutter on Dot Club, wished I had done it sooner, and now feel safer about adopting light, purposeful tracking as standard practice. The plan is to keep a better eye on things and ensure the Club stays tidy.

The journey and the destination

Hey, it means a lot to me that you read this whole post. After deleting my social media accounts in 2022, I did a lot of introspection and research. Anyone who���s followed my newsletter, chatted to me over email or text, or even discussed in person the state of technology and its impact on us, will know I���ve spent a lot of time down a bunch of weird rabbit holes. It feels healthy to be able to share what I've learned.

I realise this Dot Club development makes me that guy who walks into a shoe shop, tries on every pair, then walks out in what I came in with. But I���m okay with that. Needing to understand what I���m doing and why I���m doing is it one of my personal fixations. And I���m grateful for everyone walking that path of discovery alongside me.

So, thank you ����

Oh yeah, about that email provider

By the way, the email provider I switched to was EmailOctopus (referral link, ahoy!). Their free plan offers almost everything their paid plan does, just with smaller limits, unlike just about every other provider at the time I switched.

This meant I could do the darkmode thing for photosensitive readers (hello, ND friends), offer a plain-text equivalent for people who prefer reading lo-fi emails (hello, terminal friends), and road test the entire EmailOctopus product against a variety of circumstances over a long period of time. That���s a genuine test, as far as I���m concerned. And when I was finally in a position to sign up for a paid plan, I had no doubt that I was getting value for my money.

On top of that, I felt good about signing up with them. EmailOctopus is a bootstrapped startup, meaning their funding comes from the company owners instead of outside investors, so their decisions provide value first and foremost to their customers, not to some rich shareholders.

And, so importantly, they care about ethics and sustainability. They actively contribute to ocean cleanup and emission reduction, and invest in carbon removal. I mean, I hope it���s not one big PR greenwashing scam, but I���ve been with them for almost two years now and feel satisfied with my choice.

The tl;dr for anyone who skipped�����Dot Club stopped counting opens and clicks in April 2022 after I freaked out about sustainability and surveillance capitalism.I did not like tracking before, because I had seen people do it badly and carelessly, and was worried that was the only way to go about it.A housekeeping project (involving light, purposeful tracking) revealed I was sending 500 unnecessary emails each month, producing the equivalent of 2kg of CO2 emissions for no good reason.I learned that light tracking can be helpful AND it doesn���t oblige you to do creepy tracking. Not every tech company works that way.Dot Club will now resume counting opens and clicks so I can continue keeping things tidy.