Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and how it affects your email reporting

Understand how email opens reporting is impacted by Apple MPP

In 2021, Apple announced a new feature called Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) for its Mail app. This update for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8 prevents 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. Since we use a tracking pixel to track email opens, the update affected our ability to reliably determine which contacts opened which emails when using Apple Mail, including anyone who checked their email on the Mail app, no matter which email domain they used (such as Gmail and Yahoo).

• What is Constant Contact doing about it?
• What does it mean for you?
• Which other metrics matter?

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 is Constant Contact doing about it?

To ensure you can still easily track the effectiveness of your emails, we've updated our email reporting to reflect both "confirmed opens" and "proxy opens." Confirmed opens are those performed by real humans and not by privacy proxies, bots, or other automated tools, like Apple MPP. Proxy opens, on the other hand, are opens those performed by privacy proxies, bots, or other automation tools that can artificially inflate your reporting. By separating your opens into these two categories, we can remove proxy opens from your opens and clicks reporting, making it more accurate and a better representation of your contact engagement. If we're able to later determine that a proxy open is a confirmed open, your reporting is adjusted automatically.

• How email opens are tracked

How are other Constant Contact tools impacted?

Since we have a reliable way to track when opens are coming from Apple MPP, we're able to prevent them from impacting other tools and features within Constant Contact:

• Resend to non-openers - Proxy opens don't count, and the contact is considered a non-opener unless they become a confirmed open before the scheduled date of the resend.
• Subject line A/B testing - Proxy opens are ignored in subject line results.
• Segmentation - Proxy opens don't count if you're creating a segment that is based on email opens, like your most engaged contacts, or contacts who opened an email.
• Automations - Proxy opens are ignored when opens and engagement criteria are added to either the trigger filter or auto-stop.
• Automated email series (legacy) - Proxy opens are ignored if an automated email series is set up to send when a contact opens a specific email.

Which other metrics matter?

Email is 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 also important to focus on email engagement, like clicks, too. 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?