Table of Contents

• Changes That Impair the Reliability of Your Email Open Rates
• How To Check If Your iPhone Mail Privacy Protection Is On?
• So, What Next For Marketers?

Changes That Impair the Reliability of Your Email Open Rates

Email marketing was vital during the pandemic because it allowed businesses to reach customers directly through their inboxes. Email marketers heavily rely on key metrics like open rates, clicks, and opt-outs to gauge campaign success.

Apple announced the Mail Privacy Protection Policy (MPP) in iOS 15, another step to improve privacy across Apple’s product line.

So, what does this mean? Apple Mail users make up roughly 53% of all Apple users, and this update prevents them from sharing open rate data. Previously, when an Apple Mail user opened an email, a tracking signal was sent to Apple. A recipient cannot tell if an email has been opened because the image is cached on an Apple server after it has been sent but not seen by the recipient. The protection feature hides your IP address, preventing the sender from tracking your mail activity.

How To Check If Your iPhone Mail Privacy Protection Is On?

During the iOS 15 upgrade, a screen notice asks if you want to protect your mail activity. You may have missed this important message because we rarely pay attention to the iOS update and just try to get through all of the prompts to get back to our phones.

Go to Settings > Mail > Mail Privacy Protection to enable it. And chances are, you chose “yes” for mail privacy protection.

So, What Next For Marketers?

It’s time to ditch open rates and use clicks, conversions, and opt-outs as your email campaign KPIs.

Future changes in cookie tracking and privacy settings will continue to protect users and make tracking behaviors more difficult. This will force marketers to create better campaigns, mailing lists, and campaign structures to increase engagement.