Apple has announced Mail Privacy Protection. From this autumn, the Mail app on iPhone, iPad and Mac will preload the images in an email, even if the recipient never opens it. As a result, your email tool will count opens that never took place. The open rate becomes artificially high and tells you less and less.
This affects many email marketers, because for years the open rate has been the figure many teams steer by. In this article you will read what is changing, which figures you can still trust and what you can adjust now. That way you will be ready when the change goes live.
What exactly is changing in Apple Mail
You measure an open with a small, invisible image in your email, known as a tracking pixel. As soon as someone opens the email, that image loads and your email tool registers an open.
With Mail Privacy Protection, Apple fetches that image itself, in the background. It does this through its own server, not through the recipient’s device. Your email tool therefore sees an open, even if the recipient has not yet seen the email.
There are further changes:
- The recipient’s IP address is hidden, so you can no longer see where someone is located.
- The time of the open is no longer accurate. Apple fetches the image when the email is delivered, not when someone reads it.
- You can no longer see whether someone opens the same email several times.
This concerns Apple’s Mail app, not the email address. Someone with a Gmail or Outlook address can also use it, as long as that person uses Apple’s Mail app and turns on the privacy option.
What this means for your figures
Your open rate will go up, but not because your emails are getting better. How much it rises depends on how many of your subscribers use Apple Mail. If your list has many Apple users, the effect will be large. If your list consists mainly of business recipients using Outlook, you will notice less.
The biggest problem is that your figures become mixed together. Part of your opens are real and part are not. Afterwards, you can no longer reliably tell them apart. As a result, trends and comparisons with earlier months say very little.
Other features that rely on opens are also thrown off:
- Testing subject lines based on open rate.
- Choosing the best send time based on the time of opening.
- Content that adapts to location or time of opening.
- Cleaning your list based on who no longer opens.
- Automated flows that start after an open.
So do not look only at your reporting, but also at everything in your email tool that is set up around opens.
Which figures you can still trust
The good news is that you are not going blind. You are simply measuring at a different point in your reader’s journey. A click or a purchase shows that someone has actually done something. That is stronger evidence than an open, even without this change.
These are the figures you can keep using:
- Click rate: the share of recipients who click a link. Check the definition in your tool. Some tools calculate clicks per delivered email, others per unique open.
- Conversions: purchases, sign-ups or quote requests that come from the email. Measure them with UTM tags and in your web analytics or web shop.
- Revenue per email sent: revenue divided by the number of emails sent. This lets you compare campaigns fairly.
- Unsubscribe rate and spam complaints: signals that your content or frequency does not fit.
- Delivery rate: the share of emails that arrive. This remains a healthy baseline figure.
A UTM tag is a piece of text added to the end of a link. It lets you see in Google Analytics exactly which email led to a visit or purchase. Make sure all links in your emails are tagged this way. You will then have a measurement that is independent of the open rate.
Adjust your tests and automated flows
Start with your subject line tests. Many teams pick the winner of an A/B test based on the highest open rate. Soon that result will no longer be reliable. Pick a winner based on clicks, conversions or revenue per email instead. This sometimes requires a larger test group or a longer test period, but it produces a result that matters.
Next, look at your automated flows. A flow is a series of emails that starts automatically after an action by the recipient. Many flows currently start after an open, for example a follow-up email that only goes to people who opened the first email. For Apple users, that condition will soon be met for everyone. You would then be sending emails to people who have not seen the first one.
Rebuild such flows around a different starting point:
- Start the follow-up email after a click, a page visit or a purchase.
- Or send the follow-up email after a fixed waiting period, regardless of behaviour.
- Segment your list based on what people have done on your website, not on what they have opened.
Also check whether your emails contain live content, such as a countdown timer or an offer that varies by location. With Apple Mail, this may load earlier than the recipient reads the email. Test this thoroughly before you continue to use it.
Clean your list using clicks and purchases
Many businesses remove inactive subscribers by looking at who has not opened anything for a while. This is sensible, because a clean list helps your deliverability. But soon everyone using Apple Mail will look active, even if that person never reads your emails any more.
So use other signals for activity. Look at the last time someone clicked, bought something or visited your website. Set a time frame that suits your sector. For a web shop sending monthly emails, that might be a number of months. For a B2B company sending fewer emails per year, the time frame is longer.
A common scenario: a web shop sends a weekly newsletter and uses the open rate as its yardstick. After the change, the open rate rises on paper, and the team thinks the emails are working better. Meanwhile, clicks and revenue per email stay the same. The list looks healthier than it is. The team keeps people on the list who have not responded for months. As a result, deliverability slowly declines and emails land in the spam folder more often.
Suppose this team switches to clicks and revenue per email now. It will then have a clear comparison later on, because the figures from before and after the change are measured in the same way. The team will also see which subscribers genuinely respond and can keep serving that group in a targeted way. People who have not clicked for a long time receive a final email asking whether they still want to stay. Anyone who does not respond is removed from the list.
Frequently asked questions
Should I ignore open rate altogether?
No, but use it as a rough indication. For lists without many Apple users, the open rate remains useful. Check in your email tool how many of your readers use Apple Mail. That tells you how strong the distortion is. Above all, steer on clicks and revenue.
When does this take effect?
Apple has announced that the feature will become available this autumn with the new versions of iOS, iPadOS and macOS. Users need to install the update and choose the privacy option in the Mail app. The effect will therefore build up gradually. Use the time until then to switch your measurements.
Can I still personalise and segment?
Yes. Segmenting based on purchases, pages visited, clicks and information that people have entered themselves will continue to work. Only segments based on opens and on location derived from the open will soon be unreliable. Replace those with behaviour on your website and in your web shop.
Book a free 30-minute introductory call
Would you like to know what this change means for your email marketing? Adventio Marketing in Amersfoort is happy to review your flows, segments and reporting with you. We will show you where you currently steer on opens and what better measurement can deliver.
Book a free 30-minute introductory call. You will get an honest picture of the risks in your current set-up and a few concrete steps to start with. Get in touch and we will arrange a time that suits you.
