The Positive Push From the Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)

Apple has recently released their Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) on September 20, 2021. This new feature will be self-activated on iOS 15 Apple device settings, which can allow the user to hide their IP address when using email. This new feature does not get added automatically, but gives the user the option to decide if they would like to protect their data or not. However, this is only for the Apple Mail app, for example other email apps, such as the Gmail app on the iPhone, are not affected.

Quite simply, this means that the sender will no longer be able to see when or if the user has opened the email, potentially impacting how and when marketers send out campaigns or emails to their audiences.

So, what does this mean for email marketers? This could impact the data that marketers receive in relation to open rates, changing the way that they evaluate the information that they get from their customers. For example, this change could mean potentially showing false open rates, meaning that marketers will have to shift the dependency of using open rates to impact their content material.

What are the options for Marketers? Well, first off there is no reason to panic. This is actually not necessarily a bad thing as it could help your marketing efforts to become more personalized by shifting your main focus from open rates to what people engage with in your emails through clicks.

By basing your content on click-rates (aka what your customers find interesting) instead of open rates, you could improve your content and make your campaigns more relevant to your audiences. It is all about the personalized experience as “83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience” (Accenture) meaning that you should take advantage of the data that your customers are providing you with, like what they are interacting and clicking on.

Also, by paying more attention to the way that customers engage with your content, it could eventually lead to more open rates as the overall content would be improving for the user.

Rethinking how we view our customer interactions is an important step towards creating good communication between the sender and the receiver. This could have been the push we all needed towards focusing on creating more personalized content for our audiences.

Curious to learn more? Read the press release for MPP from Apple.