Apple's new email privacy protection features will have far-reaching implications for email marketers, requiring them to implement several coping strategies. Why? This will affect everything from email analytics and deliverability to email strategy and design significantly. Indeed, these changes, which will begin this fall, will prevent email senders from seeing the open behavior, IP address, location and device information of Apple Mail users. In particular, the lack of visibility around openings will be a challenge. Apple will retrieve the content of each email upon delivery. This will not only make business hours inaccurate, but also make almost 100% of your emails received by subscribers using Apple email clients appear to be open whether or not they are.
That's no small problem, as roughly half of all emails opened currently occur on Apple Mail, according to data from Litmus. Fake opens generated by Apple will dramatically inflate overall email opens, which marketers have traditionally used as a signal Image Masking Service of engagement for a variety of purposes. However, there is a solution that can help address many of the challenges caused by Apple's new privacy protections. This is to segment Apple Mail users. How can you do this?
Using device identification. Let me explain... The Mail Privacy Guide for Marketers by Litmus Thrive in the Age of Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) Wondering what Apple's MPP is and how to prepare your email program? See our survival guide for the details, a handy checklist and a step-by-step action plan (including an open rate impact calculator). Get your guide and calculator How "real openings" can be used to help you During his presentation at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Garrett Reid, Privacy Engineering at Apple, said that under the new privacy policy, the type of device reading the email will not be revealed. It's unclear exactly how Apple will report device information, but it's highly likely that marketers will at least be able to identify and create a new segment of unknown devices using tools like than Litmus Email Analytics.