Apple’s Dramatic Shift in Email Tracking

All Apple iPhone users will soon be getting a software update, iOS15, to be released this fall, while Mac users will receive MacOS Monterey during the same time period.  While many of these updates offer seemingly minimal changes for our day-to-day use, behind the scenes a big change is taking place that may impact your station’s email efforts.

In the next update, users will be prompted to select whether they would like their email opens to be tracked or not, and, based on behavior surrounding the recent release of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (the option to block tracking via apps), we anticipate the vast majority of users will select to block email tracking as well. In fact, 96% of iPhone users are NOT allowing app makers to track their app usage — 96%! This is largely because App Tracking requires users to take action to allow App Tracking. The default is off. The mail option is slightly different in that Apple will be presenting users with a one-click option to block tracking when they update their phone. This option will ACTIVELY be presented to users — they will not have to find a setting to activate blocking.

For many stations, 50% or more of emails are opened with Apple Mail. This loss of tracking pixels will block stations from seeing details of the emails they send, most notably whether or not the email has been opened. With the new update, Apple will be pre-loading all images and tracking pixels into a proxy, so when the user opens the email, they will be loading the image from Apple servers. The likely result will be that all emails sent to Apple devices will show as opened which, of course, will not be the case. Having limited information may complicate email efforts that rely on “opens” to determine resends. However, click-through rates of emails can still be relied upon, which will become increasingly valuable as tracking open rates becomes less reliable.

While change can certainly be a scary thing, it’s worth noting that other digital updates, while initially concerning, have resulted in positive outcomes. For example, when Gmail launched its “Promotions” tab a few years ago, many feared this would lead to a reduction in responses, now that fundraising emails would be explicitly flagged. However, after close monitoring, we actually saw a lift in donations from Gmail users, as people engaged when they were ready, paying closer attention to the emails being pulled out into a separate folder.

CDP will be keeping an eye on the impact of this Apple update and will adjust our work and recommendations as we learn more. Be sure to keep checking the CDP Blog often for future updates and related suggestions.