Email - Mail Privacy Protection

What’s the deal with Mail Privacy Protection?

As a newsletter, you can imagine that Apple’s recent Mail Privacy Protection announcement had us shaking in our boots a little bit.

Ok, maybe not full-on shaking. But a little quiver for sure.

Here’s what we know so far:

Apple announced that after the iOS 15 update, inboxes using Apple Mail will eliminate pixel tracking.

Similar to the iOS 14.5 roll-out, users will be prompted to opt in to protect email information:

The move isn’t totally unexpected given Apple’s public commitment to privacy, and this isn’t the first time a platform has altered the email game.

In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection will make it impossible for email senders to track pixels and therefore track open rate (or at least to track it accurately.)

According to Litmus, 93.5% of all email opens on phones occur in Apple Mail, and Apple Mail on Mac is responsible for 58.4% of desktop email opens.

Brands rely heavily on open rate as the determining factor in an email’s success – with these changes, they’ll need to start focusing more on CTR.

Moving forward with CTR

Becca Sherman suggested a two-pronged response:

   Keep your subscriber list clean

   Optimize for clicks.

Protecting your deliverability rate means regularly "scrubbing" subscribers, removing those that will bounce or mark you as spam.

"If you don’t scrub your list (or "keep it clean") your emails will hit promo tabs, spam boxes, and – worst of all – you will be put on blocklists.

Before the update, open rate was a primary indicator for removing unengaged subscribers.

Now, clicks are the name of the game.

If a reader clicks on your links, it will register as both an open and a click.

window.lintrk('track', { conversion_id: 10616324 });