For years open rates have been one of the most popular metrics used to determine subject line effectiveness and the broad reach of the information being put out. However, with Apple’s new email privacy update, this metric may become a thing of the past.
When Apple announced this update, many businesses were left wondering how this would affect how they determine the success and reach of the material they’re putting out. So the question remains, what exactly is the new update, and what effect will it have on business metrics?
How Does The Email Privacy Update Work?
At an elementary level, the new Email Privacy update separates your emails from your IP address and location so businesses cannot obtain sensitive information. This change is in response to most Apple and internet users, in general, being concerned about the amount of data available to businesses.
More specifically, what Apple is doing is filtering all emails received through a separate server. This server opens the emails before they are sent to the inbox, making it so emails are not directly associated with the consumer’s device and personal information.
What Does This Mean For Email Metrics?
In short, this new update means that open rates will no longer be as accurate of a business tool as they once were. They were never the best way of measuring whether or not the customer was being reached for various reasons, mainly because plenty of people open emails and never read them, but now they will be especially unreliable.
Based on the metrics that we’ve seen so far, 100% of emails are still not being opened, but the percentage has gone up enough to skew the success of these numbers. Open rates will be inflated beyond what they would usually be, making it difficult to observe the success of the subject line and content sent out that week. If you don’t know how many of your customers are opening your emails, you cannot know if your information, new product launches, etc., is getting out.
The Future of Email Metrics
With this being a relatively recent update, we cannot be completely certain how this will affect email metrics’ future use. However, email providers like Klaviyo are currently developing a technical solution that will filter out these metrics. So for now, while they are still working on the technical aspect of that, we have some suggestions that will allow you to make your email metrics as accurate as possible.
One possible strategy is segmenting out IOS users and sending them email campaigns separately. Then, you can simply look at the email metrics from non-IOS users and base your success rates on those numbers. It is not a perfect solution by any means, but until the technology has been developed to do this automatically, it is the next best option.