#  What Apple Mail Privacy Protection Means For Email Marketers

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## Table of contents

- What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?
- How does Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) work?
- How to enable Apple Mail Privacy Protection
- What impact does MPP have on email marketers?
- How has the new iOS 15 update impacted email marketers?
- How to deal with Apple MPP
- Way forward

At the annual [WWDC conference](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/) held on 7 June 2021, Apple announced a new feature in their iOS15 update - **Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)**, which provides users with more privacy features and stops email senders from collecting information about them.

So, what does it mean for your future email campaigns? How will it impact your business? If you are looking for answers to these questions, this guide is for you.

We will talk about the nitty-gritty of Apple MPP and give you actionable tips to deal with this change.

## What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?

**Apple Mail Privacy Protection is a feature introduced by Apple that enhances user privacy by preventing email senders from tracking email opens and users' IP addresses. When enabled, it automatically loads the email content, like images, on the device in a way that masks the user's location and activity, thus blocking tracking pixels and other mechanisms used to monitor email interactions.**

**Note:** MPP is available on the Mail app with Apple's iOS 15, iPad OS 15, and macOS Monterey devices. So, the mail service doesn’t matter; as long as you use any of the iOS devices mentioned above, MPP will be enabled.

## How does Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) work?

  

With this new iOS 15 update, all the email content will be downloaded in the background, regardless of whether a user has opened the email or not. Since all the data is rendered even before the user opens his/her email, the email open data you get will be inflated as all the emails that you send will be tracked as opened.

Let’s take a look at how MPP works in detail:

  

**Step 1:** Email downloads are triggered when a user opens the Apple Mail app.

**Step 2:** Apple downloads all the images in the email, creating a copy to a new location on the Apple Privacy Cache. This can happen randomly and at any time, i.e., immediately or after a couple of days. The email download is triggered by a [proxy server](https://www.webshare.io/proxy-server) with an IP address that masks their specific geolocation.

**Step 3:** Apple’s caching process requests images, including the open tracking pixel, from an email service provider (ESP) like [Mailmodo.](https://www.mailmodo.com/) This can lead to misleading tracking as the ESP thinks the email has been opened.

**Step 4:** When subscribers do open the email, download requests are triggered, but instead of coming from the sender’s web host or the ESP server, it’s coming from the Apple Cache. This means you won’t be able to track the real open.

  
  

![Process that happen when user enable protect mail activity](https://res.cloudinary.com/mailmodo/image/upload/f_auto,q_100/v1643876581/strapi/Process_that_happen_when_user_enable_protect_mail_activity_389b93b0a4.png)
  

## How to enable Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Apple Mail Privacy Protection is turned on by default if Apple Mail is your default email client. In other cases, you need to manually [enable this feature in your Apple devices](https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphf084865c7/ios). Here’s how you can do it:

If you open the Apple Mail app after downloading iOS 15, then Apple will, by default, tell you everything about MPP. You need to select the Protect Mail activity button from the options given and you’re done.

  ![MPP feature](https://res.cloudinary.com/mailmodo/image/upload/f_auto,q_100/v1643876585/strapi/MPP_feature_5dcb42996b.gif)

If you haven’t set it up when you were prompted about the MPP feature, here’s how you can do it manually:

  

**Step 1:** Open the Settings on your Apple device.

**Step 2:** Go to Mail, and find Privacy Protection.

**Step 3:** Turn on the toggle button next to Protect Mail Activity.

  

![Steps to enable Apple MPP feature in](https://res.cloudinary.com/mailmodo/image/upload/f_auto,q_100/v1643876588/strapi/How_to_enable_Apple_MPP_c87521df45.gif)
 So, that’s how you enable the MPP feature on your Apple devices. But what if you’re on the other end of the email? What happens to your emails if you’re sending them to Apple users who have this feature turned on?

## What impact does MPP have on email marketers?

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) inflates email open data, making it harder for email marketers to gauge how their target audience who have enabled MPP engage with their emails.

While click tracking remains available, the lack of genuine open tracking data complicates identifying disengaged contacts and assessing email campaign performance.

You might decide not to depend on opens as a measure of your email marketing success, but email open data offers valuable information for tactics based on Artificial intelligence (AI).

Some of the impacts that Apple mail privacy protection has are as follows:

### 1. Flawed A/B testing subject lines

You won’t get accurate results after conducting subject line [A/B testing](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-ab-testing/) on Apple Mail users. Therefore, you need to rethink the strategies you use to optimize your [subject lines](https://www.mailmodo.com/email-subject-lines/), as open rates might not reflect the effectiveness of your subject lines.

### 2. Flawed send-time optimization

Send time optimization (STO) is based on the user’s email open timings as part of its algorithm to determine the right time to send the email. So, STO will be flawed due to overinflated openings and wrong timings.

  

### 3. Difficult to track email deliverability

Monitoring [inbox placement](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-deliverability/) will become challenging as you cannot rely on opens to ensure that your email has landed in the inbox.

### 4. Challenging to maintain email list hygiene

You will need to dive deeper into users’ behavior to get active or inactive data without [open rates](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/good-email-open-rate/). Open rate is the foremost metric used to remove inactive users, but your job becomes even more challenging without it.

### 5. Restructure automated flows and journeys

All the [automated journeys](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-automation/) designed to send emails based on open timing will become useless as users’ actual opening timing can’t be tracked. So, you need to re-create all the automation for the Apple Mail users.

### 6. Challenges to email personalization

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection hides email open data, making it difficult for marketers to track engagement. This limits their ability to personalize emails and tailor future communications based on user behavior. Personalization of emails is affected as follows:

-   Localized emails such as nearest store location, and weather-based content created using their IP addresses won’t be accurate.
    
-   Countdown timers might show outdated times due to discrepancies in sent timings and the actual open timings.
    

## How has the new iOS 15 update impacted email marketers?

Email marketers were concerned about their campaigns’ effectiveness because they feared that it would be hard to measure email marketing performance and make data-driven decisions without tracking open rates. However, in 2022, the overall impact on email senders has been relatively modest. According to [a study on email marketers](https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/HUBSPOT-INC-45166580/news/HubSpot-How-Apple-iOS-15-s-Impacting-Email-Marketers-39885708/):

-   **47%** reported that data privacy changes had a neutral effect on their email marketing strategy
    
-   **29%** found the changes had a negative impact
    
-   **24%** saw a positive impact from the privacy changes
    

Email marketers initially feared that MPP, with its new email privacy features, would pose a disadvantage with limited performance metrics, personalization challenges, and strategy adjustments. However, [61%](https://martechseries.com/content/email-mktg/64-of-marketers-believe-apples-mail-privacy-protection-will-forever-change-email-marketing-according-to-getapp/#:~:text=email%20marketing%20efforts.-,Sixty%2Done%20percent,-already%20indicate%20that) of marketers have noted that this new privacy change has provided an opportunity to innovate their email strategies. Marketers must reassess strategies that depend exclusively on open rates and incorporate new performance metrics.

  

## How to deal with Apple MPP

Whether you like it or not, the Apple MPP feature is here to stay. We've already discussed how it affects your email marketing efforts. Here are some tips for you to follow to deal with this update:

### 1. Determine the email client breakdown of your audience

As per [Litmus’s November 2021](https://www.litmus.com/email-client-market-share) email client share report, iOS users accounted for 54.02%, and over half of the email opens came from Apple users.

  

Understanding which email clients your audience uses helps you adjust your strategies. By checking your email analytics, you can see the breakdown of email clients. For example, if many of your recipients use Apple Mail, you need to know how Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) might impact your metrics. With MPP, open rates might not be accurate, so focus more on metrics like click-through rates and conversions. Separate Apple Mail users from others to better track performance and tailor specific strategies for specific segments.

### 2. Look for alternative engagement metrics

As open rates become less reliable with the adoption of MPP, it is crucial to explore alternative methods for evaluating your email campaign’s performance.

**Click data** is the most straightforward substitute. Clicks represent intentional actions and, thus, offer a great way of tracking recipient engagement.

  

Another important metric you can calculate is the **email quality score**; a concept shared in the Really Good Emails podcast by Lucas Chevillard, the former Email Marketing Specialist at **Airbnb.**

Email quality score shows the percentage of users happy with your emails. This score helps you understand the engagement quality and should be added to your reporting.

  

**Email quality score = [1 - (unsubscribers/responders)] x 100.**
 This score must be aimed to be at 80% or more.



### 3. Evaluate current activities for open rate reliance and update them

Before developing new [automation strategies](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-automation/), identify which tactics rely on open rates. Some of such dependencies can be:

-   Send time optimization
    
-   [Subject line](https://www.mailmodo.com/email-subject-lines/) A/B testing
    
-   Automated emails triggered by opens
    
-   Segmentation based on location or opens
    
-   Localized content
    
-   Countdown timers
    
-   [Suppression lists](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/suppression-list/) of unengaged users
    
-   Deliverability or inbox placement monitoring
    

  

After evaluating these dependencies, you can eliminate them to avoid future inaccuracies that might hurt your entire email campaign.

### 4. Get user feedback via surveys and polls

> Email metrics can’t tell you what talking to people regularly can.
>
>\- [Ashley Guttuso, Director of Marketing at Simple Focus](https://simplefocus.com/)

  

To know how users find your emails, and what they like and dislike, ask them directly. Send out surveys and feedback forms to understand if what you’re sending resonates with them.

## Way forward

Being a marketer comes with its challenges, especially when it comes to personalizing interactions and connecting with customers. **Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)** might affect how you engage with your audience, but it also offers an opportunity to reassess and refine your strategies.

While MPP will impact how your email campaigns perform, it shouldn’t be a source of fear. To succeed in the long run, you need to adapt your email marketing strategies to align with these privacy changes.

To stay relevant and effective, follow the methods outlined in our guide. This will help you adjust your approach and ensure that your email marketing efforts continue to deliver results despite the new privacy landscape.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What sets Apple Mail apart from other email providers in terms of privacy protection?

Apple Mail stands out with its Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which hides open rates and IP addresses from senders, providing enhanced user privacy. Unlike many other email providers, MPP prevents tracking of email opens and user locations, making it harder for marketers to gather detailed engagement data.


### Should I turn on Apple Mail privacy?


Turning on Apple Mail Privacy Protection can enhance your privacy by hiding open rates from senders. However, it may limit the ability of marketers to track engagement. If privacy is a priority and you’re comfortable with potential trade-offs in email personalization, enabling it is beneficial.


### What is the downside of Mail privacy protection?


The downside of Mail Privacy Protection is that it obscures email open rates, making it harder for marketers to gauge engagement and effectiveness. This can impact the ability to tailor content and measure the success of email campaigns accurately, potentially leading to less personalized communication.

### Who will be impacted by Mail Privacy Protection?


Mail Privacy Protection primarily impacts email marketers and businesses, as it limits their ability to track open rates and engagement. This can hinder their ability to assess campaign effectiveness, personalize content, and understand recipient behavior. It also affects data accuracy when analyzing marketing performance.


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---

**Author: Nupur Mittal**

Nupur has 2 years of experience in planning, creating, and implementing effective content strategies. She is passionate about email marketing, and SaaS and has written in-depth long-form content ranking on Google's first page.

