How Apple's iOS 15 Could Impact Email Marketers
When Apple announced their new iOS 15 update, digital marketers and brands alike went into shock. Mail Privacy Protection meant that email open rates would be blocked as Apple continued its crackdown on data privacy. There’s been a fair amount of concern around data privacy issues over the last few years, but no one quite saw this coming.
Rest assured, the sky isn’t falling.
To continue to remain effective, marketers will need to be more specific in their efforts and intentional about the information they collect and how it’s used.
There are three primary iOS15 updates that will affect an email marketer’s ability to serve subscribers:
Mail privacy protection will eliminate the ability to accurately track open rates
Private relay will hide the user’s IP address while browsing the web
Hide my email will allow users to mask their real email address with a fake one
Currently, many marketers use email open rates as a metric of success in email marketing campaigns. iOS 15’s new features curb those open rates, hindering some from even appearing in personal inboxes, meaning in-email link clicks will become increasingly important.
The good news is that, while opens have been a great measurement for engagement, there are far more precise ways to segment your emails and determine what’s working.
Here are four ways you’ll change your email marketing as a result of the iOS 15 update:
1. Move away from open rate data
Focus on other data points from email engagement, like clickthrough rates, website visitors, sign-ups, purchases and orders, as well as shares on social media.
2. Re-imagine your A/B testing on subject lines
Without open rate data, it becomes more difficult to test how well subject lines work. Use this opportunity to focus less on subject lines and more on the content of the email itself. For example, compare click-through rates from emails with images vs those that don’t have images.
3. Take a new approach to personalised, location-based emails
Without IP address data, geo-targeting personalisation becomes a lot harder. Consider acquiring information about your subscribers through other means, like a survey or sign up forms that require a location.
4. Manually segment your audience
Use survey data, prior purchases, click behaviour and other information to create your email segments.
This isn’t the first time there have been major changes to iOS, and likely won’t be the last. If your business relies heavily on email marketing, know that Content Smith is always working one step ahead to ensure our client’s email marketing strategy remains effective.
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