In today’s episode we’re talking about Apple’s upcoming Mail Privacy Protection feature and how it’s going to impact email marketing. This feature prevents email marketers from using invisible pixels, which determines who has opened your email, for recipients who use Apple’s Mail app, whether that’s for iPhone, iPad, Mac computers, or Apple Watch. So what this means for email marketers, is that your email open rates will become unreliable. Listen and find out more.
Links in this episode: How Apple’s Mail Privacy Changes Impact Email Marketing
Transcript
Welcome to the Get Digital Marketing Results podcast where we give you information and actionable tips to grow your organization.
Bob: Hi, I’m Bob Clark.
Donna: And I’m Donna Botti. We’re with Delos Inc and we make the web work for you. In today’s Tech News Tuesday episode, we’re talking about Apple’s upcoming Mail Privacy Protection feature and how it’s going to impact your email marketing. This feature prevents email marketers from using invisible pixels for recipients who use Apple’s Mail app, whether that’s for iPhone, iPad, Mac computers, or Apple Watch.
Bob: That’s right Donna. Invisible pixel graphics are used to determine who opens an email. When someone opens an email and downloads the email images, one of the images is a tiny pixel, which allows your email provider to detect that the email was opened and what device was used. With this Mail Privacy Protection, Apple Mail will preload images and content of emails you send — including the tracking pixel — regardless of whether the recipient actually opened the email or not.
Donna: So what this means for email marketers, is that your email open rates will become unreliable. You might see your email open rates skyrocket as a result of these changes, but those won’t be actual email opens.
Bob: Some email marketing features that rely on email opens and other pixel data will become less reliable. They include features like the ability to resend to non-openers which automatically resends an email to anyone who hasn’t opened it after a specified period of time. Apple Mail is used by about half of email recipients so data may not be available from those people.
Some automated email series are set up to trigger based on if and when a subscriber opens a previous email. This is no longer an effective way to set up your email series, since Apple Mail will report an artificial open for some of your subscribers and trigger the next email, whether someone read your previous email or not. Instead, consider using an email click as a trigger in your automated email series.
Donna: Creating great calls to actions and encouraging click-throughs are now more important than ever. There is some good news, however. Email still has the highest return on investment, or ROI, of all forms of marketing and is even more likely to drive sales than other channels like social media marketing. So it’s still important to grow your list, use great subject lines, and have a good clickable item in your email that will measure the true engagement you’re getting. Remember, you’re using your email marketing to build relationships, so encouraging click-throughs and replies will help you determine what content is resonating.
Bob: That’s it for today’s episode. You can find a link to an article on this topic and a transcript of today’s podcast, at DelosInc.com/200.
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