January 28, 2022
Your email stats just got wonkier, and in the coming year, they'll get worse. Apple's new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) update, starting with its OS 15 operating system, will no longer support mail tracking. Ergo, your user's open times, device information, and geographic location will become unknowable. Although MPP is opt-in, experts believe 97% of consumers will opt-out of tracking. While this is a boon to consumer privacy, your email marketing program is kind of screwed. (Source: Pentavision)
How MPP Works
According to Apple, Mail Privacy Protection works by hiding your IP address and loading images and other remote content privately in the background, even if you don't open the message
This behind-the-scenes pre-opening tricks the tracking mechanisms into thinking a user opened your email. The bottom line: your open rates get inflated but click-thru rates will remain reliable. Discover the impact for your email by checking your email platform's stats or Google Analytics for the percentage of IOS 15 users on desktop and mobile. Unless you're marketing to Neanderthals, you won't unearth good news. Because 80 days after its launch, iOS 15 has already achieved a 60% adoption rate. (Source: Mixpanel).
What Can a Marketer Do?- Find out if your email platform will allow you to suppress email from analytics based on an operating system.
- Remove all Apple Client Users from re-deployments to eliminate the user frustration from receiving the same email twice.
- Consider reporting the Click-Thru-Rate as a percentage (CTR%) of sends (the number of emails successfully sent). CTR% yields a lower number than the old open rate, but it's not affected by MPP. To compare campaigns, you'll need to calculate CTR% for a chunk of previous email campaigns.
- Focus more on Click-Thru-Rates per send in reporting as the most reliable engagement metric.
Mail Privacy Protection is here to stay because consumers demand it! So, keep a stiff upper lift and think about switching to click-thru-percentage of sends.