According to official communication from Mailchimp, Apple’s release of iOS 15 and macOS Monterey offers a new feature called Mail Privacy Protection. If the user enables this feature, it will limit the ability for email marketing software providers, like Mailchimp, to accurately determine the following strategy:
• Whether or when an email has been opened
• The estimated location of the recipient when they open the email
• The type of device and email client a recipient is using when they open the email
This is a big change for email marketers. Here’s more information about this change for the email marketing industry and how you can prepare.
About Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
Mail Privacy Protection impacts open tracking, like open rates in your campaign reports, and also can make it difficult for providers to determine a contact’s location. When someone who has Mail Privacy Protection enabled receives an email, Apple preloads all of the email content—this includes what email service providers use to track opens, regardless of whether the recipient opens the email or not. As a result, it’s likely that all emails sent to your contacts using Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection turned on will be reported as “opened.”
While there’s still a lot we won’t know until people begin to enable Mail Privacy Protection. For now, here are some steps you can take.
These are some Mailchimp features that will be affected by this change:
• Open rates on reports may appear inflated
• Journeys and automation based on open behaviour may include contacts who didn’t open the email
• A/B testing based on open behaviour may include contacts who didn’t open the email
• Segments based on open activity, contact rating, email client, campaign engagement, or location may be inaccurate
There are a couple of ways you can think about this change and what you should do. A good first step is to take some time soon to see how many contacts in your audience use Apple Mail, before some of your contacts enable Mail Privacy Protection. If it’s not many, you may want to wait and see how your engagement is impacted. If your audience includes a lot of Apple Mail users, you may want to adjust how you use certain features and analyze your results.
Mailchimp has created an Apple Mail Privacy Protection FAQ. It lists the impacted features, what changes you can expect to see, what you can do going forward to help measure the success of your campaigns, and where you can go for additional help. If you need help with your email marketing strategy, let us know.
