How Apple’s Email Privacy Update Affects Business Marketing

Apple is changing the way advertisers and publishers see when consumers open emails, and that means a big change in how email marketing looks for the future. 

Background

Launched on Monday 20 September the new Apple Mail feature, if enabled by the user, prevents email marketers from using invisible pixels to collect information about recipients. 

The feature is available to the users of Apple Mail app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac PC and Apple Watch to hide information such as when they open an email from another device or engage in other online activities associated with that device.    

The Apple Mail app also allow subscribers to block email trackers and stop loading remote content such as images, leaving it up to Apple to load remote content for subscribers. 

Apple stores images when the Mail app is running, and that's a great signal to marketers that you have a valid email address. Although senders cannot track openings in Apple Mail, many Apple users seem to be idle when they click on your email. Report openings by Apple Mail users can boost your total open rate and you will be able to see other data about your email campaigns.  

The new feature aims to prevent e-mail senders from collecting critical information about e-mail recipients and allows users to prevent e-mail senders, publishers and retailers, among other things, from recognising when they open an e-mail.  

Why does this affect marketing?

The purpose of most email campaigns is to get clicks and conversions, whether that’s selling goods and services online or delivering personalised content to better suit your audience. Marketers also use open email data for retargeting and rely on the data to target those who open an email but end up not buying, to then make a purchase.   

Email metrics can influence advertising messages, social contributions, guides, and content design by product and marketing teams. Email can influence marketing strategies and enable better overall business success.    

For years, email openness rates have been the standard for measuring campaign success, user engagement, and monetisation of email advertising. Open rates are one the most widely used KPIs to measure user engagement and the effectiveness of certain email campaigns. The use of email metrics can increase the ROI of email programs and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing channels.    

Without open rates for email, marketing based on user behaviour (e.g. time and location optimisation), businesses will no longer be able to improve campaigns based on user behaviour.

The future of email marketing

Email experts are trying to understand how the new email privacy initiative will affect marketing, since according to Litmus, Apple's email applications had accounted for 48% of the global email client market by July 2021.  

On the positive side, by allowing users to block open data, Apple is forcing the marketers to higher standards and innovative email strategies, shifting valuable metrics like clicks and engagement away from demonstrating the effectiveness of the campaign.    

While Apple's recent Mail Privacy Protection feature is great for users who want to feel more secure, we know email marketers have a lot of questions as Apple Mail and Apple mobile devices account for about 35% of email providers' market share.

Google, Outlook and other email providers have not yet announced similar steps to protect privacy, meaning that their open IP data provides solid tracking information for email marketers but this is likely to change as the battle between the technology giants about who is really looking after their user’s interest heats up!

Do you think Apple’s Mail Privacy feature is a good change? Let us know in the comments below.