Apple Mail Privacy Protection Recommendations

Based on what we know currently, Apple Mail Privacy Protection tools will pre-fetch email images even before a user opens an email, which can provide false open indications. This privacy tool has the largest impact on your Delivra feature set. In this article we'll offer recommendations for optimizing your strategies that rely on open tracking.

If you don't have time to read through all recommendations now, skip to the recap section below for the main ideas.

Segmentation

Example # 1: You segment audiences by open & did not open behavior.
As previously stated, Apple Mail Privacy protection is expected to pre-fetch images even before a user opens an email, which can provide false open indications--resulting in inaccurate detection of Apple Mail user’s open behavior.

We recommend that you:

• Update open & did not open segment clauses to use click / did not click, viewed / did not view, or purchased / did not purchase clauses.
  • For click clauses you can define a specific URL or Any URL activity from the campaign.
  • Don’t forget about updating your triggered segmentation too.
• Consider adopting lifetime engagement segmentation as a holistic approach to responding to subscriber behavior.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream or browse tracking integrations to expand tracked behavior options for segmentation.

Example #2: You segment audiences by lifetime engagement score.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, resulting in inaccurate detection and scoring of Apple Mail user’s open behavior.

An important note for you to know is that our algorithms for contact and campaign engagement consider additional actions beyond the open-- including clicks, clickstreams, purchases, social media shares, forwards, and unsubscribes.

We recommend that you:

• Adjust the points assigned to open behavior in the General Account Settings of your account.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream or browse tracking integrations to expand tracked behavior options that contribute to engagement segmentation.

Campaigns

Example #1: The goal of your email is to deliver information and it includes few click opportunities.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, resulting in erroneous open rates and inflated campaign “success” when reviewing performance statistics.

We recommend that you:

• Use a direct call to action in the subject line and in your message to encourage engagement beyond the open.
• Re-imagine the layout of your email & develop plans to incorporate clicks.
  • For example, consider including less reading material and more interactive call to action buttons. Though this will reduce the amount of information IN the email, it encourages click behavior, which will directly improve your ability to measure success.

Example #2: You use A/B test campaigns to determine the impact to open rates when tweaks to subject lines are introduced.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, also resulting in erroneous open rates and incorrect identification of a “winner”.

We recommend that you:

• Use a direct call to action in the subject line and in your message to encourage engagement beyond open and use this as your measurement for the winner.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream tracking integration to expand tracked behavior options for A/B testing.

Example #3: You rely on sending intelligence to deliver your campaigns at optimized times or in recipient time zones.
These features will be affected by both Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images which will produce false open indications and timestamps AND the expectation that Apple Mail will no longer pass an IP that can be used to trace location.

A few things to note here:

• Based on what we know right now, we believe that Time Zone Sending can still detect regional location data which will produce accurate information about a recipient’s time zone.
• And, while we believe that individual Apple Mail user data will not be accurate for determining best open time, Send Time Optimization also evaluates collective account-level data to determine the best send time based on historical open and click tracking of all subscribers.

We recommend that you:

• Ask for location data from your subscribers. In addition to the regional detection that we expect for Time Zone Sending, this functionality also uses stored subscriber data, like Zip code and country to determine time zone.
  • Pro-tip: If you’re concerned about sign-up barriers if you ask for too much information, don’t include multiple location fields like City & State & Zip. Eliminate City & State and just ask for a Zip code. It will inherently tell you the city & state.
• We also recommend that you use a direct call to action in the subject line and in your message to encourage engagement beyond the open.

Automation

Example: You use automation to evaluate open behavior in the automation series and/ or you run re-engagement automations.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, resulting in the inaccurate handling of Apple Mail users in your workflows.

We recommend that you:

• Update behavior evaluations to use clicks, pages views, purchases, category subscriptions, etc.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream or browse tracking integrations to expand tracked behavior options for automation.

Lead Scoring

Example: You use lead scoring to evaluate email open behavior to prioritize leads.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, resulting in erroneous open scores for Apple Mail users.

We recommend that you:

• Update scored behaviors to use clicks, pages views, purchases, form fills, category subscriptions, etc.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream or browse tracking integrations to expand tracked behavior options for lead scoring.

Analytics

Example: You rely on open rates to determine a campaign’s success from standard and custom reporting.
Apple Mail’s pre-fetching of images can provide false open indications, resulting in skewed open rates & inflated “success” reporting.

We recommend that you:

• Use a direct call to action in the subject line and in your message to encourage engagement beyond the open and use this as your measurement for success going forward.
• Implement Delivra’s clickstream or browse tracking integrations to expand tracked behavior options that can be measured.

Recap

The main takeaway from this article is that we must adapt to Apple’s new privacy tools. While not all of them will impact typical email marketing plans, a few have enough impact for our Delivra customers that it should not be ignored.

We must reframe our email strategies and goals to define new ways to measure performance. And we can adapt through the adjustment of how we think about success, how we design our emails, and how we expand trackable behaviors that can be linked back to emails.

To recap, the recommendations outlined here are:

1. Update existing open evaluations in segments, automations, campaigns, and lead scoring to use other metrics that indicate engagement.
2. Use Delivra’s clickstream integrations for purchases and browse tracking to take advantage of new behavior tracking opportunities. These integrations run on deliberate subscriber activities, or raw data, and not IPs or metadata.
3. Amplify your use of call to actions in your subject lines and in your messaging to encourage recipient engagement beyond the open.
4. Ask your subscribers for data that is important to your email marketing strategy instead of relying on metadata.