A tough pill to swallow considering just a couple months ago Apple rolled out app-tracking transparency with their latest update, iOS 14.5, allowing users to opt-out of in app tracking.
A major blow to Facebook and the many marketers reliant on the conversion tracking of their finely tuned Facebook campaigns.
It’s been reported that 85% of worldwide users clicked ‘ask app not to track’ when prompted, with that number rising to 94% in the US. So, we can likely expect a similar response when users eventually update their iPhones to iOS 15 this fall.
As part of the update this fall, a new ‘Mail Privacy Protection’ tab will be added within the Mail app. Within this app, users can decide how much personal information is shared with email marketers.
Based on our understanding, the big hit here for email marketers is tracking opens. Open rates, unique/total opens, and open location data will not appear for users that choose to protect their mail activity.
Email marketers can still monitor these contacts’ behavior with tracked links, but the other tracking won't happen (opens, forwards, IP address, and other data).
In addition to blocking email pixels, Apple is debuting a “Hide My Email” feature, which will enable the creation of single-use, randomly-generated email addresses.
Just like a burner phone in The Wire, but instead of using a burner account to evade the police, it’s your prospect downloading that new white paper.
This feature in particular is designed to further limit companies’ ability to collect your personal data through email and also presumably to limit junk email.
What it means to marketers
These updates will surely be a significant change to most marketers given that as of May 2021, 93.5% of all email opens on phones come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads and Apple Mail on Mac is responsible for 58.4% of all email opens.
Email marketing has become a critical marketing channel for brands and organizations of all shapes and sizes - particularly during the pandemic.
As I write this, my inbox continues to fill up with half-assed “personalized” plain-text drip emails from people I don’t know with messages that are so vague it’s impossible for me to understand if they’re offering something I actually need.
From a publishing and sponsored content perspective, brands are expected to spend $535.6 million on email ads in the U.S. this year, up 10% from 2020.
Yes, it will be more difficult for brands to measure and compare sponsored email performance without accurate open rates, but are you really sponsoring that association email newsletter for the opens? The goal remains the same, to engage, convince, convert - and I’ve never been convinced that email opens are solid engagement.
Whether or not Apple’s new privacy features really are well intentioned, or they’re just further trapping us into their walled garden (it’s definitely some combination of both), privacy and permission based marketing is here to stay.
The power that lies in today’s behavioral targeting capabilities is truly incredible and has empowered marketers all over the world to launch efficient campaigns with budgets large and small. That being said, there’s no doubt that excessive tracking and our obsession with the bottom of the funnel has come at the expense of not just quality content - but our customers’ permission.
While there’s a lot of change in the digital marketing landscape, our team at STAPHAUS is excited to partner with companies that are ready to take on this next era of digital marketing.
Effective and efficient digital marketing will remain possible, but to succeed brands must focus on actually providing quality content to a relevant audience to gain permission for the 1-to-1 targeting that many of us have taken for granted.
Good marketers have always understood the importance of permission based marketing. Now that the permission is literal, I'm optimistic we're on a path to better, more relevant marketing that actually provides value to customers in exchange for their time and data.
