By Alison Green, agreen@lessitermedia.com
Email Specialist, Lessiter Media
If you don’t spend most of your time in the world of email, your first question is likely, “What is Apple MPP?” To give a short answer, it is the new privacy protection features wrapped into Apple’s software update that was released in the Fall of 2021.
Once an Apple user agrees to “Protect Mail Activity,” all emails sent to that user are now automatically reported as an “open” when the email is RECEIVED, not when it is actually OPENED. This applies to any Apple device with the Mail app: phones, desktops, laptops, tablets, even that coveted Apple watch. (You can dive deeper in this article from Campaign Monitor.)
As a user, I welcome the move towards personal privacy; but as marketers we've been forced to rethink our key reporting metrics. Open rate metrics now can’t be validated for these users, affectively killing the reliability of open rates as a key metric.
It is important to understand how your Email Service Provider (ESP) is reporting these metrics currently. If you can identify the percentage of users who have opted in for the additional protection, you can determine what percentage of your opens are likely inflated.
In the infographic below, we share the Campaign Monitor's timeline of impact from Apple MPP to identify the current impact and two new reporting metrics to focus on instead of opens going forward.
If you or your team has questions about your email reporting, we would be happy to identify areas for improvement or share tips that our team has implemented to maintain the integrity and deep understanding of our audience data.
Source: Campaign Monitor
