Apple is rolling out changes to iOS 15 and macOS Monterey for email that has marketers buzzing and arguing about what it means for email marketing campaigns.
Here’s everything you need to know:
What changes is Apple making this Fall?
Contacts can choose to not have their email opens tracked by companies.
Contacts can choose to not have their IP address disclosed to marketers, which means you don’t know where they are physically located.
What are the nuances you should know about these changes?
These are changes contacts will need to opt in to. They do not go into effect automatically. But the changes will be promoted and are likely to have strong adoption rates.
Non-tracked email opens are not new. But this move will make them a bigger portion of your list. Email opens have never been 100% tracked and open rates are not a perfect measure of email performance. There are many instances where someone opens an email and it cannot be counted, and your open rates have likely always been slightly under reported. But Apple’s move will have a very large impact on how many can’t be tracked. Clicks and conversions have always been a stronger, more reliable measurement and will continue to be reliable.
IP locations have never been 100% accurate. For example, I track where my own addresses show in email marketing reports and I’ve often been reported anywhere from 10 to 250 miles from where I really am. This change will make data simply not reported for a portion of your list.
Apple also allows users to have an incognito address. For example, they can register on a form where you cannot pick up their email address. This is NOT part of Apple’s new rollout. But many suspect it will be marketed with the new features, leading to higher adoption of this feature.
Will your open rates go down as a result of the Apple Update? Yes. But all your competitor’s and industry benchmarks’ open rates will go down at the same time.
When does Apple’s iOS 15 email change go into effect?
Fall. September is projected.
What does this mean for your marketing campaigns after September?
If you’ve been opting for the easy button, using predominately open rates to measure your campaign performance and clean your list, then you need to step it up. Open rates are only one measure of campaign performance. They are already an under-reported and somewhat inaccurate metric. The scale on these will skew more to under-reporting after the changes.
Rely more on interaction with your list, especially clicks, conversions, forms filled out, subscriptions, and downloads.
Cleaning your list to remove spam traps should be a regular part of your program, using a third party tool to match addresses to known spam traps. Many companies think they can remove spam traps just by removing non-openers on their list. Removing non-openers does help remove spam traps, but also removes some good customers. With less visibility to open rates, cleaning the right way goes from a should-do to a must-do.
Why this isn’t a bad thing.
There will be some visibility lost to the first step in the funnel for a portion of your list. However, clicks, sales, conversions, forms filled out, subscriptions, and downloads are your end-goal in the first place. This move by Apple is going to force heavier emphasis on these more accurate metrics that are further down the conversion funnel. Isn’t that what good marketers place the most importance on in the first place?
Here’s an easy analogy of what the change means to your business, especially for retail marketers.
Think of a brick-and-mortar store for your business in a shopping mall. You know there are going to be 50,000 people going through the mall today. You’ve put a special promotion throughout your store and in your shop windows.
Let’s say in the past you’ve been be able to track most of who paused in front of your store window, who came into the store, who picked up an item off the rack, who tried something on, who talked to a sales associate, who scanned a QR code in-store and who ultimately made a purchase.
The comparison to what happens after Apple’s new privacy rollout is that you’re losing the ability to know a high percentage of who paused in front of your store window display. You retain all the other metrics. Yes, they are smaller metrics, but they are also more valuable, higher-converting metrics.
The mall walkers who browse every day but don’t come into the store are the ones you’re going to have to work harder to get in the door to engage. But you should be doing that already, right? You’ll still have intelligence about how your window displays are doing from non-Apple contacts and people who haven’t engaged with the opt-ins.
What should you do between now and September?
Re-engage and clean your list if you aren’t actively doing it.
Keep split-testing. See what types of subject lines, content, and templates encourage engagement beyond opening the email, recording higher-value metrics.
Segment your list for not just open rates, but for what content and products your contacts show true interest in.
Build holiday marketing plans and reporting focused on high-value metrics.
If you need help. Let me know.
Peak Marketing Communications | The right message - to the right contacts - at the right time.