In the last year, Apple has taken security measures to reduce online vulnerability and ensure users are safe from spam, bots, hackers, and other malicious attacks. From online shopping to emails, and even your own website, security is of utmost importance to any online business. These security measures can go a long way to protecting your data, but unfortunately, it affects data available for marketing across email and social media platforms.

Earlier this year we wrote about how iOS 14+ would affect your ads on Facebook. It was major. The TLDR of it all: basically Apple iOS users can opt-out of sharing their data with apps including Facebook. As a result, ads can no longer target Apple iOS users based on their activity, as most users opted out. There are new measures roughly in place to track this data, but it’s not perfect and doesn’t give you nearly as much data to make decisions.

Now, we are gearing up for the impact of the release of iOS 15. It’s packed with tons of new features, but the one that can affect your business the most is the privacy protection updates. The security updates plan to take data protection even further with the introduction of new mail privacy options for people who use the Apple Mail app on their devices. And with the ever-growing Apple device usage, now at 46% in the world, that’s a lot of users who may be affected by this update, if they opt-in.

This update allows users to choose if their email activity is protected and hidden from email service providers (and the people that sent the emails). If you opt into having Apple protect your email activity, Apple will hide your IP address and privately and remotely load email content and images you receive on Apple’s cloud servers, caching the data there instead of on your personal devices. 

Basically, it will check your mail for you, allowing its server to be the opener and not your computer, phone, or tablet. What’s pretty cool and amazing, is that now your data won’t be scanned each time you open an email, leaving you less vulnerable to hackers and people phishing for personal data.

But, this once again affects your marketing outreach efforts. No matter what email service provider you use — Mailchimp, Constant Contact, PhotoBiz, or others — the data you receive (or don’t receive) from Apple users will be affected by this change.

I mean, upon reading this, which one will you choose?

Apple’s last update in spring 2021 saw 96% of its users opt-in to data privacy protection. With a screen like that (above) saying protect my data or not, I assume most users will choose to have their mail activity protected.

It’s quite simple really. Once people opt-in to having Apple protect their mail activity, all their emails will be “opened” by Apple’s servers. This will vastly inflate open rates on your email marketing campaigns.

For example, if you have a list of 5,000 customers or leads, and before the new security update you averaged 30% open rates (1,500), your open rates may falsely increase by as much as 75%, if not more. After the update, your email metrics may show an open rate of 90% (4,500). This is because the metrics will include Apple’s servers reading the emails you send, as well as if/when people use the Apple Mail app to read their email, across all their devices. 

So emails will look opened, even if a real user didn’t open them.

It’s an unfortunate result that will frustrate digital marketers for sure.

This is worrisome because it will now be harder for digital marketers to know which email subject lines are performing best. For example, running A/B tests on subject lines may become nearly useless.  How will you know who opens which one more?

Click-through rate

Now that the open rate will be skewed, the importance of click-through rates will rise.

Click-through rates indicate when your contacts open an email and click on the links in it. This metric will not be impacted by Apple’s new privacy settings, as Apple won’t click on any links, just open emails. 

So you’ll want to monitor your click-through rates closely.

Content

Even though it will be difficult to track the performance of subject lines as a result of iOS 15 email privacy settings, you should still create clever subject lines to encourage people to open your emails. You just won’t be able to validate your success with open rates any longer. Instead, it’s time to focus on click-through rates. 

Clean up and organize your email lists

Email list hygiene is important. While you are taking a closer look at your email metrics, you should also take a closer look at your email list to make sure you are contacting the right people, and people who are still engaged with you and your business. Go through your list and remove bad emails (running your list through an email validator can help), plus review your tags or segments to make sure people are organized properly.

Important Links:

Learn How to Tag Your Clients Within the PhotoBiz platform

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection: What This Means for Email Marketers and How to Prepare Now

 
In the end, the purpose of Apple’s privacy updates is to help secure your personal data. The challenge is that it comes at a cost, which is valuable email marketing data. Now you'll need to focus on tracking the links people are clicking, and what they do after they get there. That’s where you’ll see success.

Want to set up an email campaign with PhotoBiz? Need help with setting up or updating your tags and contacts? Give our support team a call at 866.463.7620 or live chat with us. We’ll be happy to assist you. We’ll continue monitoring changes that may impact your online business and keep you updated.

TLDR; Apple’s new iOS 15 update will allow users to opt-in to have their email activity protected by preloading it on Apple’s servers, but this will cause email marketing campaigns to have false higher open rates, making digital marketers have to rely on click-through rates.

The new iOS 15 will be available for Apple users on Monday, September 20, 2021.