Apple Mail Privacy Protection: What You Need to Know

Apple Mail Privacy Protection impact on email marketing

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Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature…

Understanding Apple Mail Privacy Protection

If you’ve updated your Apple device to iOS 15 or iPadOS 15, you might have noticed a new feature: Apple Mail Privacy Protection.

Delving Deeper into Apple Mail Privacy Protection

If you’ve updated your Apple device to iOS 15 or iPadOS 15, you might have noticed a new feature. But what does this mean for you and your email marketing efforts?

The Impact on Email Marketing

The good news is that the reading experience of your campaigns remains unchanged for iPhone or iPad users. However, the updates may affect the reliability of email open reports. In some cases, they might not report at all or may report inaccurately.

These issues mainly occur with iCloud accounts, specifically those ending in @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com. For other email addresses, like @outlook.com or @gmail.com, the Mail app reports opens as usual.

The Role of Clicks

Even if an email open isn’t detected, NewZapp reports it as opened once the recipient clicks any link in a campaign. This means that focusing on click-through rates could be a more reliable metric moving forward.

Next Steps

If your database has many iCloud, me.com, or mac.com addresses, consider creating separate groups for sending. This allows you to monitor their email behavior and focus more on clicks than opens.

A Closer Look at Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Apple Mail Privacy Protection is a feature that prevents email marketers from using invisible pixels to collect information from recipients. This means that marketers can no longer reliably determine when an email is opened, what device was used, or where the subscriber was located when they opened the email.

Apple Mail preloads images and content of emails you send — including the tracking pixel — regardless of if the recipient actually opened the email or not. This makes data from these pixels unreliable as a performance metric.

Why It Matters

Apple Mail is an extremely popular email client. The changes introduced by Apple Mail Privacy Protection are not specific to any email marketing provider and impact you no matter which platform you’re using. Therefore, it’s worth taking some time to get familiar with them.

In Conclusion

While these changes may, amongst others, seem daunting, remember that fundamentally, nothing has changed about what makes email the most effective form of marketing. And as always, the NewZapp Team is ready to answer any questions you may have.