Apple officially dropped its latest iPhone Operating System update, iOS15 today*. It comes with several privacy updates that are going to impact any organization’s email program.

Not to worry, I’m going to go through the key feature updates to help you understand the changes and how they will impact your email program.

At the Harrington Agency, we’re about solutions, not problems. That’s why I’m also going to offer you a few steps you can take today to protect your email program.

Let’s dig in . . .

Hide My Email

This is the feature that Apple has been touting for a while. And now it is official. “Hide My Email” allows anyone to submit a random dummy email address (generated by Apple) on an email sign-up form. “Hide My Email” will effectively eliminate knowing the actual email address of any new sign-up who uses this feature.

Email address will no longer be the anchor that nearly all e-CRMs are based on and how organizations tie online records to offline constituents.

Our biggest concern is that you could have duplicate constituents on file—someone’s “real” e-mail address and a (or several) fake email addresses—all for the same person.

List churn metrics will also be impacted as constituents join multiple times—or remove email addresses (but still are subscribed). Unsubscribe rates won’t be as reliable—if a constituent stops using the dummy email address, it will appear as a hard bounce on your reporting.

Finally, we are entering a period where you’ll need to be much more cautious about engaging in email swaps or joining email consortiums. Depending on the database’s make-up, you won’t be sure how many addresses are real.

Pixel Stripping

Anyone who uses Apple’s iOS mail program—on any device—will now have their email routed to a server(s) prior to the email landing in a constituent’s inbox. This means all emails will be opened and stripped of the hidden pixel embedded in all emails. Yep, this is the pixel that many rely on to tell us more about how a person interacts with our emails.

Open rates will increase as Apple is opening all emails to remove identifiable information. Our biggest concern is that organizations will no longer be able to rely on open rates as a metric of success. Nor will they be able to do any simple A/B open rate testing.

A lot of organizations use open rates as a metric for deliverability. This use metric no longer be as helpful and organizations will need to look to more sophisticated deliverability tools to truly quantify any deliverability issue.

Finally, any lead scoring, engagement factors, trigger or marketing automation campaigns will need to be redone to eliminate “opened email” as an element in your email program.

Private Relay

Apple is now supporting “Private Relay”, which allows a user to mask their IP address. Gone will be the ability to tie content based on what a user visited on the website. It will also mask the physical address of a user; instead, data will only show the region.

Here are a few concrete steps to take to protect your email program.

• Make sure your email list is clean and remove non-responsive email addresses from your list (you still have time to use open rates as a factor).

• Immediately work to increase click-through and response rates.

• Ensure there is a process in place for removing non-responsive email addresses from the file, that doesn’t depend on open rates.

• If you’re concerned about email deliverability, consider using a third-party program to precisely measure and diagnose and deliverability issues.

• Reevaluate what metrics are most appropriate to achieve the actual goal of the individual email or email campaign. Many of our clients have already moved away from looking at open rates as a success metric. True success metrics are deeper inside your content, such as engagement (link clicks), time on page, and abandon rates. Engagement—or link clicks—will now become one of the best ways to measure success. While this may take some adjustment, it is really the best metric to gauge whether you are sending the right content to the right constituent. In the end, eliminating open rates as key performance indicator could make your email program stronger.

• Make sure your lead scoring, engagement factors, marketing automation and any other program that used “opened” as a factor are immediately changed.

Now that iOS15 is really, really here, let us know if you need help preparing your program for the iOS15 change.

We’d love to help you clean your email list, improve your file health, and create custom KPIs that drive outcomes. 

 — Adam Ruff, Chief Digital Officer, the Harrington Agency

*Posted September 20, 2021