Apple Mail Privacy Protection was released on 20 September 2020 as part of the iOS 15 release, which heavily focused on the privacy of iOS users.
This update limits email tracking within Apple’s native Mail app. It does not affect users who use other email apps such as Gmail. iOS users using the Mail app will have their IP address masked, which makes it more difficult for senders to track whether or not they opened the message.
Behind the scenes, Apple is routing messages through a proxy server, and loading up the messages you send (including the all-important tracking pixels that send data back to your ESP) before your recipient ever opens them. So, from the ESPs perspective, the email will look as though it has been opened, even if it was not the sender who opened it. This means open rates for Apple Mail users will no longer be accurate.
Not knowing whether or not a subscriber opened a message also makes segmentation and A/B tests that are based on opens or IP addresses much more inaccurate.
Other features such as automation triggers and countdown timers may not work correctly, as their start time will be based on the time that Apple automatically opens and cached a message, rather than when a user actually opens the message.
And finally, keeping your email lists clean will become more difficult, as you don’t know whether or not an Apple Mail user is genuinely active or not.
It is up to ESPs to find technical workarounds to this new landscape, and email marketers to adjust their strategies to rely less heavily on features that will no longer run smoothly for your subscribers who use Apple Mail.
