Learn more about the Apple iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection update and what it means for you.
In this article:
What is Mail Privacy Protection?
Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is one of the privacy settings available to all Apple Mail users who use iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS8.
Users who launch the Mail app on their device can choose to opt in to this privacy setting. Once opted in, the Mail app on their device will mask their IP address and block third parties from tracking email opens and other IP data. This privacy setting is per device.
What is the impact of Mail Privacy Protection?
The Apple Mail app will report 100% open rates on emails for contacts who have MPP enabled. This is because MPP opens every single email a contact receives regardless of their behavior.
Since every email is automatically opened, you can no longer confidently rely on email opens as a key performance indicator (KPI). It also means that any action you use in your A account that relies on opens tracking can be affected.
Email opens
Industry-wide and across any platform that tracks open rate, all marketers will receive a 100% open rate report on any emails for contacts using their Apple Mail app with MPP enabled. These are considered "false" opens.
Our platform knows the difference between MPP false opens and real customer behavior. To help ensure data integrity, we are filtering out these false opens. As a result, you should only see opens that are still considered valid in your account. This includes opens from other devices, older iOS systems, those who do not have MPP enabled, etc.
In other words, we are not tracking any email opens from the Apple Mail app with MPP enabled. This includes Campaigns, Automation emails, One-to-one emails, and emails sent using the Google Chrome Extension.
However, if a contact using the Apple Mail app with MPP enabled clicks a link in your email, we'll track that link click, and record an open. The reason being, if a contact clicked a link in the email, then they also opened it.
Automations
If a contact opens your email from their Apple Mail app with MPP enabled, they will not be added to any automation that uses the "Opens/reads email" trigger. In addition, they will not correctly meet any "Has opened" or "Has not opened" segment conditions for the following:
- Advanced segmentation within a start trigger
- Goals
- If/Else forks
- Conditional waits
- Split actions
However, if a contact using the Apple Mail app with MPP enabled clicks a link in your email, we'll track that link click and record an open. They will then meet the automation trigger and/or action criteria.
Resend a campaign feature
The "Resend a campaign" feature lets you resend your campaign in the following ways:
- Create a new campaign based on this campaign
- Send to new contacts since the email was originally sent
- Send to contacts who have not read/opened this campaign
For the "Send to contacts who have not read/opened this campaign" option, any contacts using the Apple Mail app with MPP enabled will be excluded from the campaign resend.
Engagement Management tool
The Engagement Management tool lets you remove all "Unengaged" contacts ever or all "Unengaged" contacts from a specific point in time. Unengaged contacts are those who do not open or click a link in your email.
This tool will not remove any contacts using the Apple Mail app with MPP enabled.
Predictive sending
Predictive sending uses a machine-learning algorithm to calculate when to send an email to a specific contact based on their previous engagements. Most engagements rely on email opens in addition to link clicks, to identify the optimal time to send an email.
Opens coming from Apple Mail traffic with MPP enabled will be excluded in the dataset for machine learning. This means that predictive sending will be less accurate for contacts if all of their email interactions are on an MPP-enabled device. When this happens, we'll select a random send window based on our model's known peak engagement times.
Reporting
Email opens made by contacts with their Apple Mail app with MPP enabled will be excluded from all reporting.
However, if a contact clicks a link in your email from their Apple Mail app with MPP enabled, we'll track that link click and record an open.
Best practices moving forward
Email is still a valuable and lucrative part of your overall student and constituent lifecycle. And the best path forward to measure engagement is to rely on email link clicks, first-party data, and to have an end-goal in mind. Having the right data will help you make better decisions, will help you understand what your customers care about, and will help you build stronger customer relationships.
Create new baselines - focus on email link clicks
Email link clicks are a meaningful metric because they are actionable, measure engagement, and can lead to more conversions. Emails with high clicks can signify that your email was engaging and valuable. You'll want to make sure your emails contain clear, enticing calls-to-action (CTA) that gets contacts to take the next action in their customer journey.
Collect and store first-party data
You can collect and store first-party data in your account. Some of this data can include:
- Identifying website visits with Site Tracking
- Collecting email addresses or additional data a contact provides when they submit an RFI form
- An application or course registration on your site
You'll want to identify as many opportunities as you can for tracking first-party data. Then use this data, along with link clicks, to better understand what drives engagement and how your marketing strategy is performing overall.
Track towards your end goal
What do you want to achieve with your email marketing? Do you want to convert a lead to a customer? Do you want a contact to take a specific action on your site?
Successful engagement doesn't end with an email open. It happens at the point of conversion. If you have multiple conversion points, identify what they are, learn how to measure them, and measure them over time.
Will Mail Privacy Protection affect other email clients such as Outlook or Gmail?
No, it will not. This only applies to contacts who use an Apple device with iOS 15 with MPP enabled. Contacts who use an Apple device with iOS 15 need to actively opt in to MPP.
Resources
Here are some additional resources you can use to learn more about Mail Privacy Protection: