By Fresh Relevance

June 2021 has seen a series of new privacy updates from Apple, including the announcement of their Mail Privacy Protection initiative. These measures are designed to protect the privacy of the end-user. The changes will help users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and mask their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.

These changes will affect users who use iMail as their email client and have opted-in to Mail Privacy Protection. Given the wording of the opt-in, industry experts are predicting a near 90% opt-in rate.

Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple said: “Every year, we push ourselves to develop new technology to help users take more control of their data and make informed decisions about whom they share it with.” And with growing consumer concerns over privacy and the so-called cookie apocalypse on the horizon, these updates perhaps come as no surprise.

Invisible Pixels and Live Content

Invisible Pixels allow marketers to know when their emails have been opened. With the Apple Mail privacy updates, invisible pixels will be banned, meaning marketers will no longer have this ability and what’s more, it will seem as though every email sent to an opted-in Apple device has been opened.

This means if your ESP or dynamic image provider charges you per impression, you may end up being significantly overcharged for phantom opens, as well as having implications for those who measure open-rates and send-time optimization.

The upcoming changes mean that most email content will no longer be loaded at open-time within Apple Mail, which will have implications for the use of live content in emails to recipients using Apple Mail who have opted-in to the privacy updates.

As such, it’s more important than ever to have a real understanding of your customer profiles to ensure your personalized content is as accurate as possible before send.

Want to learn more about how the Apple Mail privacy updates will affect you and how Fresh Relevance can help? Read the full article here.