Before marketers could recover from the iOS 14 update, Apple plans to release iOS15 this Fall. During a press release in early June, the company highlighted further updates it's bringing to iOS 15 as it advances its privacy leadership. But what do these updates mean to the advertisers? Before we know that, it's good to point them out first.
Apple iOS 15 Release Summary
This update, in general, is meant to provide well-defined user data control and protection from third-party trackers, including a shield from hidden pixels that collect user mail engagements. Here is a bullet summary of this;
Preventing email senders from acquiring data that tells when and where the user opens the mail.
Block results collected by open pixels from getting collected without the user opting-in.
Mask user IP address just like how VPN works to avoid online profiling of the user, which will reduce or entirely eliminate location-specific data
iCloud+ "Hide my email" option, where users can create alternate (a.k.a., disposable) mail addresses that can automatically forward messages to their real addresses. Therefore, users can keep their emails private.
How does this Affect Email Marketing?
Email open rate has been an important metric to measure email campaigns. It's measured when a small embedded image loads as the user opens the inbox message. With this iOS update, Apple will preload all images and scripts, making it difficult to tell a true open from a false one.
Another big blow here is that gauging the success of a campaign or ROI won't be a walk in the park, because revenue attribution may become inflated.
Additionally, it will make location tracking unreliable at the city and state/region level. And finally, it affects list cleaning as algorithms that use opens as a mechanism to clean mail lists will become significantly inefficient.
The Response: What Marketers Can do to Accommodate these Changes
All is not lost for advertisers and brands! You can do several things in the coming months before the changes start to take effect:
Put more emphasis on first-party data. As third-party date reliance declines (also Google is phasing out the use of cookies), it's crucial to streamline data collection directly from the user, especially during sign-up or embedding forms on your landing page.
Give the user more control. As we mentioned earlier, it'll be more challenging to clean mailing lists as we advance. Therefore, giving the user more control over what they want to receive can do you the hard work. Tell the user why it's important to subscribe, but make it pretty straightforward for them to find the unsubscribe button.
Move away from open rate-dependent analytics. Going forward, you'd want to focus on clicks and conversions. Learn your audience and give them a reason to engage with your mails. Email marketers need to learn and adopt new ways of measuring campaign success rates.
Check your deliverability rate. This is the time to throw out those bad addresses by cleaning your mail list. It can also help if you segment your audience into defined categories to learn them differently.
Understand what the real impact might be for YOU. There are numerous email clients our there, and Apple Mail may not be the largest one in your customer base. To determine what the impact may be, try separating email opens by Apple Mail client now. If Apple Mail accounts for the majority of your opens, we suggest sending to this segment separately after the iOS 15 update to determine how many have actually upgraded, and if you need to switch attribution models.
Final Verdict
iOS 15 update is not the end of the world for brands nor the end of the privacy battles. Email marketers have always found a way to remain on top. Subscribe or connect with us now to learn how and never miss out on important marketing signals and trends.