Email marketing has been one of the most effective digital marketing channels for decades (over 43 years in all) and over that time it has constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of users, developments in technology, and various regulations around the world that impact marketers. With such a strong track record of adapting and thriving amidst changing conditions, email marketers are typically quite optimistic and focused on growing and optimizing their programs over time.
That positivity is being tested a bit by an upcoming change in Apple’s iOS 15, called Mail Privacy Protection. Without getting too deep in the technical weeds, this new feature provides users of Apple’s Mail app (which makes up a significant percentage of email users worldwide) with the ability to limit the amount of information they provide to email senders (marketers) with regard to their interactions with any email message. Activating the feature will mean that every email sent to an Apple Mail user’s inbox, will first be routed to a remote Apple server where all of the contents of the email are downloaded and stored. Then, when the user wants to open one of these emails, the graphics and content will actually be downloaded from the Apple server, rather than the sender’s email service provider or email platform.
Why does this matter?
This revised process from Apple impacts a few aspects of email marketing.
- The ability to track Email Opens. Traditionally, email marketers have either used the graphics included in an email message or a simple 1×1 transparent pixel to track when a recipient opens an email. This happens when the user’s email application downloads the graphic from the sender’s email platform or service. The call for the graphic is counted as an Open and is often attached to the specific recipient’s email address in the sending system. So, the email sender knows which recipients opened the email.
- When the user’s email application makes that call to download graphics or any other content for the email from the sender’s system, it is attached to the user’s IP address. This IP address has been used traditionally as one means of determining the geographic location of the recipient.
- Many email marketers use certain types of real-time or interactive content in their email messages. One good example of this is when you receive an email about the status of a delivery to your house. Every time you open that email, it makes a call to the sender’s platform and gathers the current status. So, you will actually see the content of that email change from one day to the next, making for a very simple user experience.
Each of these three areas of email marketing will be disrupted by the Apple Mail change.
Email Opens – This metric will become largely inaccurate and unusable moving forward. Essentially, every email sent to a user of Apple’s Mail app who has activated the enhanced privacy setting will appear as if it was opened the moment it was received. Once a large enough number of users use the feature, any metric based on recipients opening an email will become ineffective (Opens, Open Rate, Click to Open Rate, etc.).
IP Address – The IP address associated with activity on any email impacted by the Apple Mail changes will be an address connected to wherever Apple’s server resides. So, it will cease being useful for in any way identifying where an email recipient may be when they open an email.
Real-Time/Dynamic Content – Using the example of the delivery status email, email recipients who open an email with this type of real-time content will not receive actual updates as to the delivery status each time they open the email. Instead, it will likely show the initial status that existed when the email was first received by the Apple Mail server. This does depend on how this real-time data is being leveraged, so this is a likely approximation of the user experience if updated information is expected to appear within the email each time a user opens it.
Bidding Farewell to the Email Open Related Metrics and Tactics
Open Rate and various other metrics and strategies built on knowing how many and which users open a given email campaign are going to either be dramatically impacted or simply made obsolete when the new Apple Mail feature gets enough usage. Open Rate has long been a go-to metric to a lot of email marketers – but not necessarily all of them. This is partly due to the fact that tracking Email Opens has always been at least partially flawed. Since the most basic method is to track the download of a pixel, anyone who receives text emails won’t register as an open. Additionally, various email inbox providers have given users the ability to block graphic downloads or otherwise obscure their activity of simply opening and looking at an email’s contents. So, metrics around Email Opens have long been inaccurate.
Additionally, many email marketers are far more focused on the actions a recipient takes after receiving and opening an email – like clicking on a link or button, and completing a purchase or filling out a form, etc. Performance marketers are generally more interested in measuring and optimizing their campaigns to generate as many conversions as possible (a recipient completing whatever the desired action is). To them, an Open is simply a first step and not even one that generates any success metrics, let alone revenue.
What about IP address? Well, seasoned marketers know that having a user’s IP address is not necessarily a great indicator of their location or anything else. While the IP address of your home wi-fi network is likely to be stable and should actually be associated with your general geographic location (Country, State, and possibly metropolitan area), the IP address that your mobile device uses when you’re connected to your carrier can be wildly different. Often, the IP address is assigned by the carrier from a massive bank of servers located in various large metro areas in the country. If you look up the location of the IP address your phone is using at any time you’re out and about (not on your home wi-fi network) you shouldn’t be surprised to see it says you are actually in an entirely different state. Have you ever wondered why a search result for ‘locations near me’ sometimes returns results from nowhere near you? This can often be attributed to the search using your IP address to determine your location. So, while email marketers sometimes make nominal use of IP address data collected when a user opens an email, it isn’t typically that useful for effective geographic targeting.
So what metrics should email marketers focus on?
Now that we’ve laid out the impacts, what should email marketers do to adapt to this new world without Email Opens and various tactics built on this metric? One key step would be to look to more impactful metrics that are not only much more accurately measured, but are closely tied to business goals like driving sales, leads, signups, and revenue.
Click Rate
Measuring the users who actually click on a link, button, or other call-to-action in an email has always been a powerful tool when looking to track user engagement. In a large percentage of email marketing campaigns, the first key step in driving a conversion is to get recipients to click through the email to a website or landing page where they can take further action. Optimizing campaigns toward higher Click Rates is likely to be a more effective means of delivering real results to your business than getting more Opens ever was.
Conversion Rate
This is one of the ultimate email metrics. What percentage of recipients actually converted and made a purchase, filled out a lead form, downloaded some content, set up a meeting, or whatever other final action you wanted to drive. This should really be the key success factor in any email marketing campaign, when you’re evaluating its level of success.
Revenue per Email Sent
For businesses that can tie a marketing tactic to revenue, this one is another true barometer of success. Once you can connect the revenue driven by every email you send, you can compare against those amazing industry return-on-investment figures that show email driving 30 or 40 to 1 returns. Interested in demonstrating the value of your email marketing program? There’s no better way than connecting it with revenue.
To be sure, there are still dozens of other important email metrics for you to track. I write about a number of Negative Metrics on occasion that too many marketers ignore (Opt-Out Rate, Spam Complaints, Non-Responders, etc.). Along with a tighter focus on some of the positive metrics listed above, spending more time evaluating negative marketing signals is also a more valuable way to drive performance.
Going forward in 2021 and beyond, these are some of the key metrics that email marketers should be focusing on, as the channel continues to evolve and thrive in the post-Open Rate world.