Apple’s mail privacy protection effect on ODP
Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) lets users hide their IP address and email open activity in Apple Mail and affects Optimizely Data Platform (ODP). MPP was released on September 9, 2021, and runs on iOS 15 (or later) and MacOS 12 (or later).
Enable MPP in Apple products
iOS, iPadOS, or Mac OSX users can enable MPP by opening Apple Mail and choosing Protect Mail activity from an initial prompt.
If the user has not selected Protect Mail activity from the initial prompt but wants to change the settings later, they can enable MPP by clicking Settings > Mail > Privacy Protection in Mail.
MPP's impact on email campaigns
When MPP is enabled, users receive emails with pre-loaded images (including open tracking pixels), affecting the reliability of open data from the users. Because Apple automatically downloads remote content in the background, any MPP-enabled email registers as open in your ODP email campaigns. This inflates your open rates and provides inaccurate data.
Additionally, the IP addresses of the recipients are hidden, affecting the reliability of location data collected at email open events. However, this has less impact as ODP collects location data in other ways, such as through website behavior and orders.
The scope of MPP's impact
MPP does not impact all Apple users in your database. Email recipients must meet the following criteria:
- Use an Apple device.
- Actively use Apple Mail as their primary inbox (either they use an Apple Mail service or have connected other inboxes like Gmail to Apple Mail).
- Have installed iOS 15 (or later versions) or MacOS 12 (or later versions).
- Have enabled MPP.
React to the impact of MPP
While open rates are less accurate, you should not ignore them. They are a strong directional performance indicator of deliverability, subject line, and audience segmentation strategy.
- Refocus on click-through rates as your primary performance indicator. Click-throughs are the most accurate indicator of whether the recipient took action. A click shows the relevance of your subject line and that it led the customer to open the email. It also shows that your email content and layout led the recipient to click on your intended CTA, and your offer or exchange was relevant to the audience you targeted with your audience.
- Consider your email attribution strategy. You can go to Reports > Attribution Reports to generate different attribution models in ODP. For example, you could look at a model that attributes a website visit or order within three hours of sending an email to the recipient. You can also create a click-to-order attribution report that only looks at visits or orders that resulted from a campaign click.
- Redefine your definition of an engaged contact. Use indicators such as site visit, order, service ticket logged, SMS click, loyalty points activity, and so on in your engagement segmentation, as these represent actions people have taken with your brand.
You can still use email opens as an engagement indicator for users not using the Apple Mail app. The following image is an example of how your audience segmentation might look:
Personalization and experimentation are important to increase clicks. Without extensive automation and personalization, you can miss chances to improve your email program performance. ODP has personalization features that can help you create customer experiences and boost engagement. You can personalize your program in the following ways:
- Match with audiences for your sends – Match the content, offer, and subject line with the audience to which you send your campaigns. This can increase open, click, and conversion rates.
- Personalize your subject line with relevance – Use customer attributes or attributes from products the recipient interacted with (for example, name or brand).
- Use audience-driven or triggered automation – Use timing from certain thresholds or actions to increase relevance with prospects and customers.
- Use campaign enrollment rules – Use campaign enrollment rules to ensure you do not send too many campaigns to your contacts, which could result in less engagement.
Although email often generates the best ROI for marketers, you should implement similar channels like SMS/MMS marketing, audience-driven social/search advertising, audience-driven direct mail, and personalized on-site experiences to engage customers.
Create audiences of customers in ODP who have not enabled MPP
One way to identify customers who do not use an email app with MPP is to create an audience.
This identifies customers who use other email apps on Apple devices (such as Gmail). However, it also captures users with MPP-enabled Apple devices.
For example, you could create a filter to identify MPP-enabled customers.
- Go to Data Setup > Filters.
- Click Create New Filter.
- Create a filter with the following settings and then click Save.
- Create an audience using the filter.
