Mail Privacy Protection, which directly affects the Mail app, has caused a stir among e-marketers, and not exactly for the better. When it comes into effect this coming sudan business email list autumn, tracking pixels , also known as “invisible pixels,” that senders use to collect information about users will stop working. The user’s IP address will be hidden to prevent it from being linked to their online activity or used to determine their location, so it will not be possible to know whether or not a user opens an email.
This new feature will affect any email users read using the Mail app, regardless of the email client.
In what ways can email marketing be affected?
An interesting debate has been opened about the implications that these new features will have when it comes to tracking and measuring the results of email marketing, including whether or not the future of this discipline is at stake.
The open rate has always been one of the most widely used metrics to determine the good or bad performance of a campaign and even of the strategy itself. With the loss of the tracking pixel, all emails sent to users who have the Mail app and who have Mail Privacy Protection activated will appear as opened, regardless of whether they have opened them or not. As a result, it will not be possible to obtain a true picture of the open rate.
As a result of this situation, all those techniques that use the opening rate to drive or determine an action will no longer be accurate. We would talk about A/B tests, for example, of the subject line; emails with live content (that contain countdowns, live match results, results of a live survey or maps); database segmentations based on this metric and even automated or segmented campaigns that work taking into account the opening rate (when you need to know at what time a user opens an email to determine which email will be sent to them next). Campaigns with content that depends on location and is personalized in real time will also not work properly.
What can we do to address Mail Privacy Protection?
1- Perform a deep analysis of the data we have stored
Carefully analyze all the data you have about your subscribers, especially those that will stop working properly when Apple's new privacy protection policy comes into effect. This exhaustive study will help you make the necessary adjustments and will provide you with useful lessons.
2- Start working and take into account other representative metrics
As we mentioned, e-marketers have always taken openings into account when determining actions and evaluating the results of email marketing. However, there are other metrics that offer very interesting readings to draw effective conclusions, for example:
• Unsubscribe rate and spam complaints: make sure to keep this rate low and minimize spam complaints as much as possible.
• Click and conversion rates: both metrics offer a real picture of how an email marketing campaign is working and what content is most interesting to users.
• Deliverability: Monitor your reputation, leverage tools like email validation to ensure the quality of your user list, and seek help when needed.
3- Make lists of users who use non-Apple email clients
Identify which devices your database uses and create a list of subscribers who use non-Apple email clients. This way, you can use this segment to get a realistic view of open rates, test subject lines or other elements that depend on opens, and draw conclusions to apply to other segments and more generally.
For example, we could send a campaign with live content to a list of users who are not Apple email clients and create another version (without the live content) of the same campaign for those who are.
4- Monitor deliverability more than ever
Due to the impact of engagement tracking and managing user inactivity, deliverability rates will most likely decrease slightly over time due to this change by Apple. Put effort into monitoring the deliverability of your campaigns and if not, you can always leave it to the experts.
