How The iOS15 Update Will Change Email Marketing

The first in our Email Marketing Strategy Series, Showtime’s Cinema Marketing Expert Amin Karam shares what you need to know about this important update, and the 6 changes you need to make to your cinema email marketing strategy.

Apple recently unveiled its iOS 15 software, which rolls out this autumn. Most of the new features focus on privacy, data tracking, and user security. The move solidifies Apple’s commitment to a privacy-centered future but, at first glance, it could seem like it may leave email marketers standing on shaky ground.

The most important takeaway for email marketers is the need to start measuring email efforts in new ways. The open-rate will be less important, and marketers should start measuring in a 360-degree view, so it’s important to implement these changes before the update goes into effect.

Background on the Apple iOS 15 release for email marketing

The upcoming Autumn 2021 release presents two features (Mail Privacy Protection & Hide My Email) that will challenge the traditional ways of collecting data. Namely, advertisers who currently rely on access to data gathered via tracking pixels.

These features are great news for Apple users who value privacy. However, they will dramatically impact email marketing.

Mail Privacy Protection

Mail Privacy Protection will offer iOS 15 email users the option to load remote content privately and not disclose their IP addresses. The result will block the sender’s ability to track opens and forwards and will mask the recipient’s IP, which determines the physical location.

​​With iOS 15’s Mail Privacy, marketers will now be blind to email opens for users who have opted-in to that protection. Other users, those on desktop and Android devices, are still trackable.

Nevertheless, iOS 15’s Mail Privacy Protection is not enabled by default. Users have to opt-in. However, it is safe to say that once released, senders can expect a decline in the reported open rates.  Some of the implications this feature may have are:

• Subscribers who open relatively less might receive fewer messages with different creative, for example.

• Database cleaning of inactive subscribers is essential because it improves overall deliverability. Deployments with large percentages of inactive recipients can end up in junk or spam folders, as internet service providers assume those emails have little value. Apple’s new privacy update makes deleting inactive subscribers more difficult.

• Analysing open rates by domain (@gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail) can identify ISPs who have blocked emails or have otherwise altered the deliverability. With the new iOS email privacy option, marketers lose this ability.

Hide My Email

Hide my Email is another new Apple feature, available on iOS 15. The feature allows users to sign up for email offers with an Apple-generated randomised address instead of the real email address. Apple then forwards emails into the user’s main email account. Users can delete this new email address easily and thereby prevent its spread across the web.

Hide My Email poses several issues for marketers. First, there is no easy way to tell if a new email sign-up is a legitimate account or a “burner.” This will presumably cause deliverability issues, as subscribers can quickly delete their email, resulting in increased bounces and thus concerns to ISPs, who could alter its deliverability. (However, reputable email service providers automatically purge “hard” bounces, removing their impact on ISPs.)

Hide My Email will likely impact deliverability. Keep an eye on those rates and make sure your ESP removes hard bounces promptly.

6 changes to ensure your data (and email strategy) is ready for iOS 15 update

1. Gather more first-party data

The more info a marketer collects at the point of sign-up for each subscriber, the more data to cater to that individual’s preferences. That becomes more important as we rely less on the open metric and can no longer collect location data.

2. Focus on consent and have clear and concise opt-in practices in place

Two practices include requiring only minimal information to sign up for a general mailing list to make the process as quick and easy as possible and highlighting the benefits of receiving email from your organisation. Doing this will ensure you’re only communicating with those subscribers who really want to hear from you.

3. Give users control by implementing preference centres

Make it easy for recipients to scale back on the number of touches and the type of content they receive – or to unsubscribe altogether.

4. Segment your mail-stream

This is vital to understanding your audience. Separate your list into subgroups to learn how each target behaves. Assigning a risk level to each audience is a helpful way to mitigate deliverability issues.

5. Find new ways to adapt and engage with your audience

Clicks and conversions will be more important than ever, so give your list a reason to click. Personalising content and messaging has been proven to increase audience engagement and will be more important than ever.

6. Improve deliverability

Showtime Engage will in fact help provide a much needed ‘North Star’ to email senders. We can help marketers understand how iCloud users behave and give insight to how they place within the inbox.

Make sure you check out Amin’s other post in our Email Marketing Strategy Series ‘6 Email Compliance Rules Cinema Marketers Need To Know’

We can help! If you need advice on email marketing compliance get in touch with our Marketing Experts here