Apple opened its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2021) yesterday, and the email community has been in turmoil ever since. Why? Three words: data protection for emails.
Apple has announced Mail Privacy Protection for its Mail app on iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey devices. It is slated to hit the market between September and November this year. According to Apple, “Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from using invisible pixels to gather information about the user. [It prevents] Senders knowing when to open an email and masks their IP address so that it cannot be linked to other online activities or used to determine their location. “
How will it work?
The first time someone opens the Apple Mail app, they’ll get a message asking them to either “Protect mail activity” or “Don’t protect mail activity”.
Source: Ryan Jones
We’re not entirely sure how Apple will “prevent senders from using invisible pixels” with “Do not protect email activity” selected.
We suspect that Apple first routes emails through a relay or proxy on Apple’s servers to load tracking pixels before sending those emails to readers. Will Apple load all remote images, not just tracking pixels? How will you even differentiate what is a tracking pixel and what is just a remote image?
However, we know that this affects all emails opened through the Apple Mail app – regardless of which email service is used, e.g. B. Gmail or a work account. However, this shouldn’t affect other email apps used on Apple devices, such as the Gmail app on an iPhone.
For this reason, Apple Mail may not be able to tell you who opened your email and when.
What this could mean for email marketers
Data protection has not only become a major issue in the email industry in recent years.
This is reminiscent of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives people the right to remove their personal data and therefore anonymize it for marketers. Then came the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) with its own privacy policy. Lastly, there was talk of the loss of third-party cookies.
Maybe it was just a matter of time.
Is the open rate dead?
Since we don’t yet know exactly how Apple will handle tracking pixels, we can’t say for sure how much mail privacy will affect open rates.
Our annual market share data for email clients shows that Apple iPhone, Apple Mail, and Apple iPad will open over 46% of all email in 2020. If your audience is also targeting Apple Mail users, your open rate may be excessive. over fall (or spring for those of you below).
Many marketers have already viewed open rate as a vanity metric, but we disagree. However, we believe you shouldn’t rely on Opens as the only performance metric.
While it might not be time to bring the open rate to a standstill, it’s a great reminder to include other metrics like clicks and conversions in your reports and perhaps highlight them instead.
What about campaigns and content that is supported by Opens?
In addition to a simple metric, the Almighty Open is also widely used for:
- Re-engagement campaigns
- Automated nurture flows
- Transmission time optimization
- Real-time personalization
- Monitor deliverability
So, even if you decide to stop using the open rate as a measure of email marketing success, email privacy could compromise your email program in other ways.
Brian Sisolak put together a great thread on Twitter:
It’s been roughly 12 hours since @Apple announced privacy protection for email, and it looks like this could be a turning point for # email marketing. Aside from just opening, there are several additional consequences … see thread … and add your own!
– Brian Sisolak (@bsisolak) June 8, 2021
This, too, is all speculation at the moment. Assuming the worst, some of the potential repercussions for your Apple Mail audience who choose to have Mail privacy protection could be:
- Any audience cohort, segmentation, or targeting based on the last opened date would be rendered useless – especially important for deleting inactive contacts.
- Automated processes and trips that rely on someone opening an email would have to be revised.
- A / B testing subject lines (or anything else) with opens to determine the winner or to automatically send the winner will no longer work.
- The optimization of the airtime would become imprecise.
- Countdown timers may show stale times because the cached version was obtained at the time it was sent, not the time it was opened.
- Other content supported by Opens, such as the local weather or the location nearby, would also be incorrect.
- Some interactive emails referencing external CSS may not work.
And about list hygiene, George Schlossnagle says:
All of these posts that respond to iOS 15 blocking open pixels with “open rates are a vanity metric” consider the openings per recipient a very useful early indicator of (de) engagement and are important for modern list hygiene. I fear that this change will lead to regressive behavior.
– George Schlossnagle (@g_schlossnagle) June 8, 2021
That means this might not be good for subscribers either. While Apple’s intent is to protect subscribers, this can backfire as people end up getting even more unsolicited email, as Chad White puts it:
Blocking e-mail openings deprives senders of a metric on the health of the key list and subscriber loyalty. This leads to more unsolicited email for subscribers and more delivery problems for senders as it makes inactivity management and engagement-based segmentation impossible. https://t.co/TgBEtBq2rk
– Chad S. White (@chadswhite) June 7, 2021
Here are some stats to aid in the personalization people actually want:
- 83% of consumers are willing to share their data for a more personalized experience. (Accent)
- 76% of buyers expect more personal attention from marketers in order to build an intimate relationship with your brand. (Demand Gen Report 2020 – Study on Buyer Behavior)
- 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers personalized experiences. (Epsilon)
- 6 out of 10 marketers say increasing email personalization is a priority. (Litmus 2020 as of the e-mail, autumn edition)
What about litmus email analytics?
For several years we have known that data protection is becoming more and more important in the market. For this reason, we have taken steps to anonymize our Litmus Email Analytics offering by blocking personally identifiable information (PII), removing IP addresses and making geo-tracking optional for our customers.
We will continue to provide fully anonymized and aggregated insights.
The Litmus engineering team is currently analyzing the iOS 15 beta and, just like we did with the Gmail cache, Yahoo! Mail cache and previews clients – we assess the situation and act accordingly.
What about other email marketing tools?
There are so many other questions that we don’t know the answer to, including: How will email service providers respond and marketers like you will continue to help determine the success of email programs? What will real-time personalization tools like Movable Ink and Liveclicker do to ensure they continue to support your efforts to deliver the right content to the right people? How will this affect artificial intelligence platforms for subject lines like Persado and Phrasee?
It is worth repeating: Much of this is currently still speculation. While the future of email marketing remains unclear, there are a few things you can do now to prepare yourself.
What to do before iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey are released
Mandi Moshay made a great list of things you should do now to prepare and we can no longer agree:
#EmailGeeks: 4 Things You Should Do Now to Prepare for iOS 15:
1) Start testing the creative. Understand what is most compelling to your audience to maximize engagement using metrics that can be segmented in the future. The final openers won’t be an option anymore. 1/4
– Mandi Moshay (@MandiMoshay) June 7, 2021
To sum it up (and bring in a few of our own suggestions):
- Assess the potential impact on your program by finding out how many of your audiences even use Apple Mail to read your email. It doesn’t even matter!
- Start by testing creatives to understand which is the most compelling to your audience so you can confidently continue to send engagement emails.
- Start by tracking the click through rate via delivered (if not already done) to define a new, additional basis for the future success of the campaign.
- Clean up your lead quality, list hygiene, and sender reputation as you may no longer be able to rely on Opens as a sign of a delivery problem.
- Create audience segments and cohorts based on open data so that you can keep using them at least in the near future.
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How many of your subscribers use Apple Mail? Over 46% of the emails opened are from Apple Mail, but your own target audience could be more or less. See how much of an impact Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection could have on your email marketing efforts with Litmus Email Analytics, so you can (or may not) prepare your program. Find out → |
Email marketing will evolve
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is certainly a hit for marketing and consumers who want a personalized experience from the brands they trust. We hope it inspires the email industry to keep innovating so that brands can deliver the best experience to their subscribers and customers. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about the people who receive our emails.
What do you think of data protection for emails? How will this change your email program?
