Apple recently launched a new feature in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 called Mail Privacy Protection. With Mail Privacy Protection, emails will be opened randomly without the user’s input and no longer have accurate IP/location information. This affects all email accounts that are connected with the Mail app and all icloud.com and mac.com domains (and other related Apple domains).
Apple users must opt into the feature to take advantage of it. Therefore, we anticipate that this feature will not have a significant impact on open rates today.
Gmail and Outlook have already utilized proxies to hide IP, location information, and browser types. Apple is joining that game late. However, the area of concern is the email being opened “at random” to throw off when or if an email has been opened. This could potentially inflate open rates for Interseller sequences.
At Interseller, we recommend treating opens with a level of uncertainty to start with. Open tracking was never an accurate measure, nor should it be treated as such. Open tracking adds a small pixel into the email, which can be blocked by the receiver fairly easily. You should instead treat open tracking more of a deliverability metric and label it as “of concern” or “not of concern”. For most users, we recommend having at least a 60% open rate.
There is also a plus side to this. Given that Apple users must have their email address connected to the Mail app to take advantage of the feature, you can treat the open differently. For example, knowing that the email address is being utilized and/or checked.
We anticipate this to have a minimal impact amongst our customers, but we will continue to evaluate as the feature is adopted and progresses.
For more information, check out SendGrid’s article here: https://sendgrid.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection/
And Mailchimp’s article here: https://mailchimp.com/help/apple-privacy-faq/