Apple’s new commitment to privacy has destroyed email open rates as a useful metric in email marketing.
While the Apple user in me appreciates the protection of my data, the marketer in me is grinding my teeth in frustration.
In September of 2021, Apple released iOS 15, which includes Mail Privacy Protection. To quote Apple’s June 2021 press release, Mail Privacy Protection “stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.”
Basically, this means Apple is sending your email service provider (ESP) false data about who is opening your emails.
Don’t panic. This is not the end of email marketing as we know it.
Here’s why…
What Does the iOS 15 Update Do to Your Email Open Rates?
Have you noticed an increase in your open rates lately?
You probably celebrated this uptick, thinking your subscribers were more engaged. Unfortunately, that may not be true.
The reason your open rates have gone up is all of your subscribers who use Apple Mail now register as “opened” every time you send an email, whether they opened the email or not.
According to Validity, “Any subscriber that uses an Apple mail client with MPP will have their email images prefetched and cached, causing those emails to register as ‘opened,’ even if the recipient did not physically open the email. This will have a significant, sweeping impact on the industry, as Validity data shows that Apple dominates email client usage at about 40%. In addition, marketers will lose the ability to track device and location data from these pixels as well.”
This will also affect anyone who uses “opened an email” as a trigger in any email automation sequences.
Yes, this sounds dire, but it’s not the end of the world. There are still plenty of ways to measure subscriber engagement.
Email Open Rates are Just One KPI You Should Track
Many of us consider our email open rates to be the primary indicator of how engaged our subscribers really are.
But to be completely honest, your email open rate is just one KPI you should be tracking. It’s not the be-all and end-all of email marketing metrics.
Think about the way you interact with your own inbox. How often do you open an email just to delete it? Or how many emails do you barely skim, figuring you’ll get back to them later, then never do?
All of those count as opened emails to your ESP, and always have. Yet they don’t really indicate whether someone has read your email and found it useful.
Here are three other metrics you should track instead…
Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate (CTR) is a much better metric to track to determine subscriber engagement. If someone clicks on the link in your email, they have definitely read at least part of what you’ve sent and found it useful enough to click through to wherever you’re sending them.
Granted, going from an average email open rate of 20% to an average click-through rate of 3% can be disheartening. But it is a more accurate way of determining how engaged your subscribers really are and whether they’re enjoying what you write every week.
It just means you need to focus more on giving your subscribers a reason to click.
A simple way to do that is to make your emails shorter with a “cliffhanger” ending, then ask your subscribers to click on a link that takes them to your website, where they’ll find more of whatever it is you were talking about in the email.
This also bodes well for sending your subscribers to:
- Blog posts
- Podcasts
- Articles about your company
- Waitlists
Or any other “easy” click to get them to engage in some way.
This also lets you track subscriber engagement by how many people visit your website (a metric not affected by Mail Privacy Protection), and it gets people to your website, a good goal, as it’s where they can see your products or services.
Unsubscribe Rate and Spam Reporting
These are metrics no one wants to pay attention to. It’s sad when someone unsubscribes from your list. It’s even worse when someone reports your emails as spam. It feels like a rejection of who you are and what you’re doing.
Don’t take it personally. This person is saving both of you time, energy, and (in your case) money by removing themselves from your list. Perhaps they took care of their problem another way. Perhaps you just weren’t their cup of tea. Whatever the reason they’re actually doing you a favor by opting out.
One or two unsubscribes and the occasional spam report won’t hurt anything.
That being said, if your unsubscribe or spam reporting rates start to rise, you’ve got one of two problems:
- You’re targeting the wrong people.
- Your email content isn’t interesting enough to the people you’re sending it to.
Possibly both.
Your unsubscribe and spam reporting rates are good metrics to monitor for “negative engagement” or lack of engagement. If a bunch of people unsubscribe, it’s probably time to look at what you’re sending on a regular basis and how often you’re sending it.
Bounce Rate
If your bounce rate starts going up, you’ve got a problem. It’s time to clean your list and clear out some of the “dead” addresses. (This can also save you money, so it’s worth doing every once in a while. More on this in later blog posts.)
Here’s the Good News
Email open rates aren’t “dead.” Their value is just diminished. You can still monitor them for consistency and if there is a serious jump or dip, you’ll know something is up.
Meanwhile, pay more attention to the other metrics I mentioned above. They’ll help you determine what your subscriber engagement really looks like.
Finally, everything about writing emails remains the same.
You still want to write compelling subject lines that catch your subscribers’ attention as they’re scrolling through their inboxes.
You should continue to send valuable content that will gently guide your subscribers toward whatever call to action you’ve put into your email.
And every time you get them to take an action, ideally going to your website, that gives your website traffic a boost, which will ultimately help your search engine rankings.
Plus, the more your subscribers see your website, as well as your products or services, the more likely they are to buy, which is still your goal.
To help you continue to send valuable, openable emails, please click on the button below to download my 30 Subject Lines to Keep Your Subscribers Opening and Reading Every Email.
That way, more of those opens are likely to be genuine, regardless of how your email open rates show up in your ESP.
Please stay tuned, I’ll be writing more blog posts about how you can work with (or around) the iOS 15 to keep your subscribers engaged and your email marketing efforts profitable.