It is anticipated that the new iOS 15 update will have a significant impact on the way email marketing is conducted, with several important assets being affected. These changes are expected to affect open rates, location tracking, and the ability to correctly store email addresses, which poses an issue for businesses that rely on email marketing.
We’re here to explain exactly what this means for your business, your email marketing agency, and to offer some possible solutions for overcoming these changes.
Open Rates
What is an open rate?
Email open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers. Many businesses look to their email open rate to determine how successful their email marketing strategy is. However, it should be noted that no one metric alone should determine your strategy.
Example: If we send an email to a segment of 1,000 subscribers and 200 open, our open rate percentage would be 20%.
How will iOS 15 impact this?
Open rates have always been tracked through a tiny invisible image embedded in the email code. When the email is opened, that image loads. The loading of that image tells the sender that their email was opened. Now, with Mail Privacy Protection, Apple Mail will pre-load that image and all other script and code data when the email is received, rather than when it’s opened.
This will result in the appearance of an email open where one may not have actually occurred.
Current solutions
Step 1: Run an email by client open rate report over the last 30 days. This will indicate how many users are on iPhone.
Step 2: Create a segment using Opened Email where Client Name = Apple Mail OR Mobile Safari AND where the recipient is not suppressed.
Step 3: Split campaign emails into two clone versions, one for Apple Mail users and one for your BAU list excluding Apple Mail.
Step 4: Monitor results in the immediate next few weeks on Apple Mail. Inflating results indicate the uptake of users upgrading.
Step 5: When this happens, switch your reporting to a click-only email attribution.
Segmentation & Flows
- Expand your engaged segment definition to include other signals of engagement like clicks, purchases, and site activity—to name a few.
- For any automations (or flows) that trigger based on email opens, consider expanding that trigger definition to include other engagement criteria like clicks or product views.
- If you conduct regular A/B tests and more than 45% of your email opens come from Apple Mail, you might want to consider switching to click rates as your winning metric.
Location
How will iOS 15 impact this?
Users will now have their IP address hidden when browsing on Safari. Apple will do this by re-routing the server request through what is essentially a cyber maze. This will conceal the identifying headers and IP address, similar to how a virtual private network (VPN) works.
This update will inhibit your ability to send geographically targeted email marketing. This means that for future emails, it will no longer be possible to accurately split by country, city, town, etc.
Current solutions
There is no solution to this specific issue just yet, but we think it’s something that businesses should be aware of.
Hide My Email Address
What is hide my email address?
Subscribers will be able to create a ‘disposable’ email address when interacting with businesses. This is basically a fake email address that will route messages to the real one.
How it works
- User signs up to a new pop-up form using ‘hide my email’.
- Apple generates a ‘Fake’ email address specifically associated with that user.
- Campaign emails are sent to the ‘Fake’ email address which then forwards on to the real address.
- This will affect LAL audiences for recent email users who have opted in.
Current solutions
Option 1: Find out what percentage of your segments are affected by Apple Mail users. Build new segments that exclude those users and/or pre-date the iOS 15 changes by date range.
Option 2: Download your best performing segments and All-Time Purchaser segments as CSV lists and re-upload them into Klaviyo.
We know that was a lot of information, so if there’s anything in this article that left you feeling overwhelmed or confused, please don’t hesitate to contact DMT. We’d be happy to tell you about our Email Marketing agency, as well as what we can offer you in terms of Paid Social, PPC, Social Media Management, and more.
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