Apple announced at WWDC 2021 that the iOS 15 release would include Mail Privacy Protection on all Apple devices including iPhone, iPad and Mac September 2021.
The end user needs to enable this setting and the restrictions would apply to any email opened on Apple's Mail application (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Exchange, Godaddy etc).
Apple iOS 15 Major Changes for Email Stats
Open Tracking: Apple will start automatically pre-loading images (including tracking pixels) which may inflate outbound email open rates.
IP Protection: IP address location date will be hidden and blocked.
Hide My Email: Provides the user with a proxy email address which masks their real email address and makes it harder to attribute an email click to a sale or conversion.
Impact of Blocking Open Tracking on Emails
According to https://emailclientmarketshare.com/, Apple Mail app accounts for ~37% of all all email opens, so this new setting is potentially a big deal.
Open rates can be a proxy to understand subject line efficacy, email bounces, deliverability, conversion metrics and the overall campaign performance.
But...
Email open rates are notoriously unreliable.
False Positives: Many corporate email servers and third party security applications load images and inspect email links before delivering the message to the end user.
False Negatives: 43% of Gmail users already block images by default which means you're getting more opens than you think.
Final thoughts:
Email marketers and salespeople leveraging cold emails have been using tracking pixels embedded in the email to learn:
if/when an email was opened by the recipient
how many times an email was opened
the IP address and device registering the open
attribution of an email click event to revenue
This information is important for marketers, specifically eCommerce. The Replyify team is working with our partners to monitor the impact and identify patterns to build a model that may help with data normalization.
iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection may not impact prospecting emails because a reply from the recipient is the single source of truth that determines success for an outbound campaign.
Focus less on potentially inflated open rates and more on the positive responses generated by your email campaigns.
We'll update this post as needed.
Please contact your account manager in the live chat with any questions.
- The Replyify Team