If you haven’t heard about Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection yet, you will soon. If you’re an Apple Mail user, you’ll see a pop-up when you download the new iOS 15. And if you’re an email marketer or an organization that sends mass emails, you’ll start to see abnormally high open rates across emails. This is the inevitable effect of Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection program.
To break it down, Mail Privacy Protection is an Apple Mail app setting that, according to Apple, will “stop senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user.” For marketers, this means that open rates for Apple Mail users who opt in will be severely inflated and consequently no longer be reliable.
So what does this mean?
It means that we’ll have to make some pretty big changes. We’ll need to rely on other KPIs like clicks as early indicators of campaign performance. We’ll need to rebuild audience targeting using other metrics and be even more mindful of list hygiene and proper list acquisition practices. And maybe it’s finally time to analyze all your subject line data as subject line tests based on open rate will quickly become irrelevant.
So what do we do?
Here at Do Big Things, we’re keeping up with the latest news and resources about the new update in order to ensure our clients are set up for success in what many are calling a “post-open rate world.” Seeing that it just launched this week, we’re still learning too, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start preparing. Here are a few resources our team has found helpful:
We hope you find these resources as helpful as we did as you prepare for the “new normal” in email. If you’re like me, you’ve been stressing just a little, but our friends at Litmus calmed my nerves when I read this:
The email industry is constantly evolving. And it’s because of email’s challenges—like the lack of universal email development standards—that we’ve been able to innovate and shine. Because email marketers roll with the punches like no one else can.
Happy emailing!