Open rates
Tip 96 – Your open rates are lying to you
Privacy-focused email clients can skew your open rates.
Learn what’s no longer reliable in iOS15 and Apple’s Mail app:
- By default, all tracking pixels are opened, altering the open rate.
- IPs are also blocked. So you won’t know where users are coming from.
- Device tracking doesn’t work so you no longer know if your email was opened on an iPhone, iPad or desktop.
- Users can now generate one-off emails in Apple Mail to hide their actual email. This makes it difficult to link emails to purchases or third-party data.
Note: Gmail is also pre-opening emails, but this is a small issue (~2% open rate inflation for Gmail users) compared to Apple.
What can you do?
- Stop measuring open rates
- Stop using subject line open rates as a metric for A/B testing
- Stop optimising for send times
- Stop building email sequences that trigger on opens
- Count your subscribers that use Apple devices. If small, you may not need to worry!
- Update segments that are reliant on open rates to use a different metric.
- Focus on click and reply metrics.
- Focus on growth and retention metrics.
- Regularly clean up your mailing list.
- Ensure double opt-ins and confirmation campaigns are in place.
To learn more, read Simon Harper’s extensive documentation on iOS15 and Apple Mail privacy changes.
Hope you enjoyed today’s tip. Seeya tomorrow!
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