What is Apple Mail Privacy and how does it affect you?

Understanding Apple’s new privacy feature and what it means for you and your email marketing

What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?

Apple recently announced a new feature called Mail Privacy Protection for its Mail app. This update for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8 will prevent email senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user, such as when they open an email, and masks the user’s IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.

Learn more: For a detailed summary of these changes, check out our blog article on how Apple’s Mail privacy changes impact email marketing.

What does it mean for you?

To protect customer privacy, iOS 15 and Apple Mail will preload images in emails, including tracking pixels, which are commonly used by marketers to track email opens. Because this is also how Constant Contact tracks email opens, this update may affect the accuracy of your email reporting, as we won’t be able to reliably determine which contacts opened which emails when using Apple Mail. This includes anyone who checks their email on the Mail app, no matter which email domain they use (such as Gmail and Yahoo). As a result, it may inflate your email’s open rate and, consequently, lower the click rate shown in your reporting.

In addition to email reporting, some other Constant Contact features may be impacted:

• Resend to non-openers - Since all contacts using Apple Mail will show as having opened the email, any email set to resend to non-openers will never send to these contacts.
• Automated email series - If you set up an automated email series to send when a contact opens a specific email, all contacts who use Apple Mail will trigger the series and be added to the queue to receive the emails, whether they actually open the Trigger Email or not. Consider setting up your series to send when a contact clicks on a link in your Trigger Email instead, rather than when they open it.
• Contact Insights - When viewing your Contact Insights, you might see an inflated number for your High Engagement contacts because the contacts who use Apple Mail will always be recorded as having opened your emails.
• Segmentation - If you’re creating a segment of your most engaged contacts or based on contacts who opened an email, the segment may include some contacts who don’t actually fit the criteria. Create custom segments of your contacts based on their click or purchase behavior instead.

What is Constant Contact doing about it?

To ensure you can still easily track the effectiveness of your emails, we’re updating our email reporting and the way we calculate click rates in the coming weeks. Previously, this was calculated as the number of clicks divided by the number of opens (clicks-to-opens). We’ll now be calculating click rate based on the number of emails that were successfully delivered (or didn’t bounce). You’ll notice that this rate is lower than what you’re used to seeing, but this number is a more accurate representation of your contact engagement. And don’t worry—you’ll still see the industry average click rate in your reporting to compare how you’re doing with others in your industry.

What can you do about it?

Email is still an effective channel for communicating with your audience. While you may have looked at your open rate as the key metric of success for your campaigns, it’s more important to focus on email engagement, like clicks, instead. The purpose of your emails is to drive contacts to take a specific action, such as visiting your website, placing an order, signing up for an event, etc. Even if someone opens your email, it doesn’t mean they’re taking that desired action and engaging with your content the way you want. Focus on creating more personalized content for your contacts and including clear calls-to-action to help improve your click rates and increase engagement.

Improve your results: In addition to clicks, there are some other key reporting stats you should be using to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns. Check out our guide for measuring the metrics that matter and how to improve your overall email performance!

Questions?