The email privacy protection feature is a setting available on devices running iOS 15 or later or macOS Monterey or later, and has been available since September 2021. When you open Apple’s Mail app (hereinafter referred to as Mail App) for the first time on a compatible OS, you will be asked whether you want to protect your privacy.
You can also set whether to hide your IP address or block remote content by going to “Settings” → “Mail” → “Privacy Protection.”
Who is affected?
This has implications for both the receiver and the sender.These are users who use Apple devices, compatible operating systems, and email apps, and who have enabled email privacy protection. According to belgium email list 77% of marketers believe that “email privacy protection is automatically enabled,” but the feature is not enabled unless the recipient opts in.Any sender sending email to any of the “affected recipients” listed above is affected.
How does this impact open tracking?
Additionally, the timing of this download is unpredictable – it may happen immediately or it may not happen for several days.More specifically, investigations conducted after the feature release revealed the following impacts:
- Differences in opening times
Differences in impact by email providerEmail
addresses with domains such as icloud.com, me.com, and mac.com in particular had many opens due to the email privacy protection feature. This result matches the general assumption that many of the users of these email addresses use email apps on Apple devices. Conversely
, email addresses with gmail.com and Microsoft domains (outlook.com, etc.) had fewer opens due to this feature. This is likely because many users use email clients such as Gmail and Outlook rather than email apps.
Due to the impact of email privacy protection, it will no longer be possible to accurately track recipients’ open status, so it may be difficult to track which recipients engaged with emails or evaluate the success of email campaigns. It can be said that open tracking data has become difficult to use.
What should email senders do?
So what exactly is a marketing strategy that doesn’t rely on email opens?
In a previous blog post ,
- Eliminate the impact by using the “ sg_machine_open ” parameter of the Event Webhook function
- Measuring engagement using clicks instead of opens
These are the basic principles of how to deal with this issue, and they still remain the same.
Today we’re sharing the above with you, plus some additional advice from our team of experts.
Rethink your re-engagement campaigns
In the past, many senders may have decided when to send a re-engagement campaign based on how many days ago the last open or click occurred (for example, sending a re-engagement campaign to recipients who haven’t opened or clicked in six months to see if they still want to receive your emails).
In addition we have listed some important to measuring the effectiveness of each campaign sent, you need to also review the indicators used in re-engagement campaigns. Given the impact of email privacy protection features, an open is not necessarily a valid indicator of engagement, but a click is the indicator of a recipient’s engagement.
This makes it more important than ever to encourage recipients to engage beyond just opening. Check out this blog post for examples of successful re-engagement campaigns.
Make the most of your CTAs
To encourage clicks as a step-up in engagement, structure your email with the following points in mind:
- Emails are shorter and more concise
- Fewer but more prominent CTAs
This isn’t a new idea, but it’s especially important now that atb directory open rates are becoming less reliable. The benefits go beyond just getting more engagement.
If recipients respond to your effective CTA, you can drive them from the email to your website or app, providing a richer, more customizable customer experience than email can provide, ultimately resulting in more purchases.
For more CTA best practices, check out this blog post .The environment surrounding email is constantly changing in response to global interest. We will continue to provide information on our blog that will help you keep up with these changes.