Amazing what crops up when you have a chat with a fellow marketeer. I was chatting to Rob Sayles this week, he mentioned the upcoming iOS 15 and how it could affect email marketing.
iOS and Privacy
We know about iOS 14 Privacy Report allowing users to opt out of being tracked. 95% of US apple users have chosen that option (source: shacknews.com).
What does iOS 15 mean for email marketing?
Two main things:
- Mail Privacy Protection
- Hide My Email
Mail Privacy Protection
- An option allowing a user to load ‘remote’ content privately.
- Not disclose their IP address.
The Consequence for email Marketers
- Losing the ability to track opens and clickthrough from iPhone’s using iOS 15
Longer Term Consequences
Will this mean the open stats no longer being tracked and therefore affecting deliverability? It looks like it. Email lists with many, many ‘inactive’ recipients are likely to end up in spam or junk folders. How would it be possible to delete these ‘inactive’ users?
A Ray of Hope
In my experience the open rate is not a true indicator of the success of an email send. Check your other channels when an email goes out. Do they increase in traffic? I have a client with well over 30,000 subscribers. ALL THE OTHER CHANNELS increase in sales after an email.
Why’s That?
Well, an email serves as a prompt, a ‘brand reminder’. Direct traffic increases, organic traffic increases, PPC and Shopping Ads bring in more traffic and sales after a send. Why? The email acts as a reminder, the customer knows or has saved the domain name, people search on brand name (organic / search traffic) increases. And ads and Shopping comparison sales? That’s because a lot of people don’t realise these are ads (as many as 65%).
Hide My Email
This feature allows an iOS 15 user to signup with an Apple-generated random email address. Apple uses the random address to forward to a real email address. People can then delete that random email address, protecting them from scrapers / spam / no longer wanted subscriptions.
Hide My Email Consequences
You won’t know if the address is real or random. Again, deliverability concerns will arise. Email addresses will burn (in the US many people already burn their email addresses on a regular basis, perhaps the same in the UK). Therefore, bounce rates will increase.
Rays of Hope About Hide My Email
All the main e-platforms will purge email addresses after hard bounces.
If you have an email address in your list pre iOS15 then it is going to be even more valuable and so, so kosher.
Could there be a return to the use of codes for promotions, you can track that in most ecommerce platforms / email platform combinations.
A Final Word
If you are creating great, useful content with value you’re going to be OK.
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