When Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection in late 2021, there was a lot of discussion in the marketing world about what this means for the delivery and measurable metrics of email marketing. The team at SILVR has spent time carefully reviewing the details of Apple’s new email privacy program and monitoring its initial impact on our client’s email campaigns. We want to explain how this update could affect your email open rates and share steps we can take to ensure your email strategy is optimized.
Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is a new feature for Apple’s Mail app that is available on iPhones, iPads, and Apple watches running on iOS15 and on Macbooks running on macOS Monterey. It uses proxy servers to shield a user’s email activity from email senders.
A basic explanation of how MPP aims to protect mail activity, directly from Apple: “Mail Privacy Protection hides your IP address, so senders can’t link it to your other online activity or determine your location. And it prevents senders from seeing if and when you’ve opened their email.”1
From a marketing standpoint, MPP will make it appear as though an email was opened even if it was not opened by the recipient. It will also effectively disable any tracking pixels. Apple users will gain privacy, while senders will lose the ability to accurately measure open rates.
Open rate and email deliverability has always been a cornerstone of email marketing strategy. With the rollout of MPP, marketers will not be able to use open rates as a reliable data point of email success. Related strategies, such as A/B testing for subject lines and send times, will also become obsolete.
At SILVR, we understand that marketing is a constantly evolving field in which change is the only constant. We are ready to expand our email marketing tactics in order to continue running successful and measurable email campaigns for our clients.
Email marketing experts estimate that nearly 50% of all emails are opened in an Apple app, including more than 30% of which are opened on an iPhone—the most popular email client overall.2 MPP is not a default setting—users will be prompted to opt in or out the first time they log into an iOS15 device. If they do opt in, MPP will affect all emails opened via an Apple Mail app on any Apple device, regardless of the email provider that is used. While data is still emerging, we have already seen a shift in open rates and anticipate that many Apple Mail users are opting in to this “hide my email” feature.
At SILVR, we are adapting to MPP by broadening our performance metrics and taking a new perspective on audience engagement. Our approach includes things that we were already doing before MPP as well as new tactics and data points:
If you want to know more about MPP, best practices for email campaigns, or successful medical marketing strategy, get in touch!
