What is going to happen?
Apple has announced that iOS 15 (which is due to be released in Fall 2021) will have new privacy protections to help users better control and manage access to their data. You can read Apple's press release here. At Mapp, we welcome Apple’s decision to further strengthen privacy as a fundamental human right. No one should be tracked without their consent. As you can see below, it will be up to the individual users to decide on enabling these new features.
How will this affect me as a Mapp user?
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection could potentially affect open rates by loading content in the background in their Mail app for users who have opted to protect their email activity. This could result in incorrect data being reported. Globally, the Apple Mail app represents roughly 11% of email users, so be sure to keep this in mind when reviewing your analytics moving forward. At this time we don't have all the details on exactly how this will be implemented. It will likely affect automated campaigns and segmentation based on email opens.
While Apple prepares for the public release of iOS 15 this Fall, we are actively researching and exploring technical solutions.
What are the next steps?
We will update this page and make further announcements when we have more information. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here are a couple of steps you can take to monitor and improve your data collection and marketing strategies:
- Keep an eye on your segmentation. How many of your email recipients will be affected by these changes? Now would be a great time to create a segment of these users, especially those who do open your emails. This will let you see easily how the changes affect your statistics and make sure you're still sending them important emails in the future. You should also consider adjusting your RFE (Recency, Frequency, Engagement) to use click events for Apple Mail recipients.
- Update Campaigns. If you have campaigns based only on email openers, take this opportunity to reevaluate your setup.
Overall this change represents an opportunity to look beyond email opens as the main sign of a campaign's success! For more suggestions, please see our blog on what these changes mean for email tracking here.