#65. How Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Impacts Email Marketing | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

This topic, it has been so, so talked about in the industry. Today we will be talking about Apple’s mail privacy and how it will affect your email list.

Alissa: 0:50

Hello. Hello everybody. It’s your two favorite people in the whole world. Just kidding. It’s Vira and Alissa. I hope we’re kind of your favorites if you keep coming back for more. But before we get started, Vira and I, we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service, e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about. This is another episode of Email Einstein and we are going to get into it today. And I’m excited.

Vira: 1:35

I am too. I’m kind of excited and scared about this one. That’s like a different kind of excitement because this topic, it has been so, so talked about in the industry, has created a lot of buzz. So today we will be talking about Apple’s privacy and how it will affect your email list. So iOS 15 is now out. It hit Apple’s promised launch date of September 20th. So all of your iOS users, you’ve probably experienced some of it already if you have updated your operational system. But it has like a ton of cool features. It has redesigned the notifications, text recognition in images will be introduced. I haven’t tested this function myself, but I know that it will be there. They are introducing ID cards in wallets, so I don’t know if I will be able to add my driver license to the wallet, but I think this was the promise that you will be able to have your like physical IDs in your phone, which I think is super, super Cool. But also Apple has introduced a new mail privacy and a lot of marketers are very like skeptical about it, scared about it. And some even think that this is like the death of the open rate era Apple, like many say. And I think it’s a bit dramatic, but this is like a, literally a quote from like many blogs and Facebook communities. People think that Apple is putting a proverbial nail in the coffin for email marketing and this is like the end of email marketing era. Well, we are here to prove you that it is not an end of email, is not an end of the open rate sort of like approach. And we are here just like to show you what iOS 15 is and what you actually should and should not be worried about. So let’s start and Alisa briefly explained what is Apple iOS 15 and like what it is, especially for people who are email marketers.

Alissa: 3:53

Yeah, so this is kind of like a side note and you guys will probably feel the same as Vira and I do by the time you finished listening to this podcast, but I feel like Apple like created so much hype around this just to get their name out there more like as a marketing hack. Not even necessarily because there’s like a big thing like anyways, conspiracies. Right, Conspiracies. Conspiracies. So okay, let’s get into it. What is Apple’s iOS 15? So obviously, as most of you probably know, if you haven’t heard the term Apple, not sure what planet you came from, but Apple is a long time champion of digital privacy and their. I think again this is going back to that marketing hack thing, but I think they do it in part just to be like an outlier in the industry. And a lot of these features that they’ve just rolled out in iOS 15 are really there. And I think again, I think they did this to level themselves up and put an edge on their competitors or put an edge on themselves against competitors. So just to quickly recap what the update is going to do, it’s got basically three major like factors or components that will impact email marketing. So the first is there is going to be an ability to turn off open tracking. So this is part of like that third party data that you can get from emails. The ability to block your IP address. Again this kind of leads directly into the tracking side of things and the ability to actually hide your email address when you’re opening emails. So for those of you who are not as in the tech world as Vira and I are, and for those of you who need that kind of in simpler terms. So mail privacy protection, that’s like the big name of the update that’s impacting email marketing. What it basically does is it hides your IP address so that when people are sending emails to you, they can’t actually link it to your other online activity or determine your location. The location thing, like, I can totally vibe with, I’m cool with that. But the other online activity, even though a lot of people, especially in America, are like, yeah, turn it all off, it actually ruins your experience as the consumer on the receiving end. So on top of it all, it hides the other online activity. It helps not determine your location, so it hides your location and it prevents people who are sending you emails. So brands, in this case, from actually seeing if and when you’ve opened their email. So iOS15 affects any email that was opened from the Apple Mail app on any device, regardless of whether the email service is Gmail or a work account. So, for example, like my email, alissa@flowium.com on my laptop, because it’s an Apple product, it’s a MacBook Air, I open most of my Flowium emails from the Apple Mail app on my laptop on my desktop, which is problematic for brands who are sending it to me because now they can’t tell when I’m opening. However, I open all my Flowium emails from my. When I open them on my phone, I open them under the Gmail app. So when I open them, there brands can see that I’ve opened my email. So just so that you understand, the other thing is, like, if I had, like, alissa@me.com because that’s an Apple email, I can only open that under the Apple Mail app. Gmail emails or Hotmail emails, you can link them or set them up under your Apple Mail app. So those can be affected. But that’s only if you’re using the Apple Mail app.

Vira: 7:18

Yeah.

Alissa: 7:19

So on the user’s end, when you first open up the Apple Mail app, after you get the update, you’ll get a message that’s basically prompting you to either protect your mail activity or not protect your mail activity. Neither are you.

Vira: 7:33

I love the wording. Honestly, it’s so funny.

Alissa: 7:35

Yeah, like, who would.

Vira: 7:36

Who would pick not protect my prank privacy? It’s like, do you want to be happy and healthy or poor and. And I don’t know. And die soon or something? Yeah, the wording is a bit biased, but whatever.

Alissa: 7:48

I mean, but it’s. It’s Apple, right?

Vira: 7:50

Yeah.

Alissa: 7:50

So the choice is not turned on by default. A person actually has to go in and make that choice. However, if you don’t happen to have Apple Mail as your default email client, then mail privacy protection will be turned on by default in your settings before you ever launch the mail app. Just as a note. So whatever choice made then automatically syncs to all devices that are associated with the same Apple id, just so you understand how that works, like on your end. So as a consumer, I would say protect mail activity. Don’t pretend mail activity. If I didn’t know what it was, I would say, yeah, protect my mail activity.

Vira: 8:27

Exactly, exactly.

Alissa: 8:28

However, for us who are in the email marketing world, for us who are E commerce business owners, we really don’t want people to protect their mail activity. But the thing is, is it’s because it ruins the user’s experience and that’s our main focus here. Yes, okay, it prevents us from sending relevant emails, but it ruins the consumer’s experience in the end. So if you’re a consumer and you don’t want your consumer experience to be ruined, then I would say don’t protect your mail activity. But again, most people will probably say I’m biased. So that’s kind of like what it is, how it’s working on your end. Vira, take us into how this is going to sadly crying affect the Klaviyo account.

Vira: 9:04

Actually, it’s not that sad, Alissa. I was doing like a lot of research for this episode and I actually found the blog written by Francis Baker from Klaviyo or there was like a comment from Francis. Francis Baker. Francis is our old friend, he’s been to our podcast before. He knows everything about privacy and about all that good stuff. So he said that it’s, it’s sort of like reminded him when in 2018 they introduced this GDPR General Data Protection Regulation and everyone was like freaking out. And in 2018 they were like, okay, it’s an end of the era, the email is dead. Let’s move to social media. But yet we like adapted and I’d say that that now email marketing is even more advanced and even more, it’s better than before. So I’m sure this time it’s going to be the same. And although it’s like a trend in the industry, you know, like a lot of tech giants are doing this privacy protection things. And I know that Google has been building out its privacy sandbox as well. They are preparing all the marketers and E commerce people to prepare for the crumbs phase out of third party cookies in 2022, which is like big topic that we can discuss. But I Mean, yes, it’s going to be different moving forward, but there are still ways how you can make your emails even more personal and even better. So for us in email marketing, one of the key metrics that we use to measure our email success is open rate. I mean, it’s been until the recent changes, right? When you see that your open rates are high, it lets you know that your subject line, you did a good job with your subject line or you’re sending the email that is like relevant to your customer when it’s slow. On the other hand, it signals that your email subscribers might not actually be so into you, they might not want to hear from you. Right? So that was the metric that we were always, always relying on. And there are still many like metrics that we can track. But here are the key ways that your Klaviyo account will be impacted, especially if you have a list of more than thousand people. First of some of your open rates may be inflated. So they may not be very accurate. And I know that Klevi is working on that. But temporarily the open rates may be a bit inflated location.

Alissa: 11:27

Yeah, honestly is not like, okay, it’s not accurate. Is anything ever perfectly accurate in this world? No, but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. But I don’t know.

Vira: 11:38

Remember like when they firstly announced this like update, we were all worried that will like crash our open rates and that our open rates will be like lower than they are. That’s how I understood it when they first like introduced the updates in like June. I was like, does it mean that the open rates will be lower and it will affect my sender’s reputation? I was a bit like worried about it. But yeah, open rates, they will probably be not as accurate as they used to be. Also location tracking may no longer be reliable. Especially like if you’re tracking like at what city or the region or like state level, you know, maybe the countries you will still be able to track, but not like the city. And the state revenue attribution may be inflated as well. But again, this is something that you can check in your Shopify as well. And there you will see like the correct numbers as well. So what’s true about like all this changes is that people both want privacy, but at the same time they want personalization. And there are still many, many ways to do that. And even though we cannot necessarily track all of the open rates as accurately as we did in the past, it only means that we need to change our mindse about email and we need to focus More on creating remarkably relevant content for the customers. We need to focus on delivering the value and that’s something that we’ve been doing like for years. That’s something that we’ve been talking about ever since we started this podcast. But right now it’s like your time to shine. Just like focus on delivering the values. Buyers get to be in charge of the data they share moving forward, not the sellers, which I love. I mean as a user, I love it. It as a marketer, I’m gonna love it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna get used to it. Right? But, yeah, but like big corporations shouldn’t get to create like the content that is not like relevant to the customer. I as a customer should tell them like what I want to hear from them and when I want to hear from them. Right?

Alissa: 13:39

Yeah.

Vira: 13:39

This means that like each and every individual company, large or small, they will need to get better with what they are sending in their emails and who are they talking. Because open rates alone is not a good metric to rely on a big more complex approach. And we actually have like three, three steps slash recommendations on how to respond to this changes.

Alissa: 14:03

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, mindset. That’s the only thing. When we talked about this internally, we use like a meme that said like keep calm and email on where it’s not the death of email. Just everyone relax. It actually is just challenging us as email marketers to be smarter and more efficient and effective email marketers. That’s really all this is doing. And if you are an e commerce business own as well, this is going to be a challenge for you too because you’re managing a million different things. But in the same token, hopefully it will help and you’ll just become even better at managing your email for your brand. So the very first way to respond to these Apple iOS 15 changes, reconsider open rate and leverage other email marketing data. That’s the first one which kind of is like a leading point off of what Vira was just mentioning, which is open rate is obviously a key email marketing KPI. We use it all the time here at Flowium. Most of our clients are consumers with that. That’s something that is talked about all the time at Klaviyo. Most email marketing agencies or marketing agencies who do email, they focus so much on open rate, which yes, it is very important. However, it’s definitely not the only data point that you can actually use to figure out whether or not your email is successful. It should be a very minor starting point. It’s what we Call a vanity metric here and it’s a great one to look at. It’ll give you an idea of like, okay, like am I doing all right? But what you really want to focus on are these other data points. So here are some others that we’re actually really zoning in on here internally. Even regardless of whether the open rates are impacted or not, how many clients or how many customers we have for our clients, we’re opening and using the Apple Mail app. This is what we’re looking at now. Our focus is click through rates. So when you share links to content such as blogs or different part of the website, or an offer in an email, whatever it is, the number of clicks that you’re getting in your emails actually gives you insight onto how many or how often people who are reading your emails are actually engaging with your email. Because the thing is is opening an email isn’t enough. It’s not enough. You have to actually have engagement within your emails. So this is one that we’re really focusing on. High clicks or click throughs could hint that your content is extremely engaging, while lower clicks or click throughs hint that your readers are really very less interested in and just kind of skimming your email brainlessly, not really thinking about what they’re reading. Which again, Vira and I have talked about this a lot in your emails. You want to either educate, inspire or entertain. So make sure that you’re doing that with all of your content and you want to educate in a way that your customers find very structurally advantageous or value based. You want to entertain in a way that’s not cheesy or weird and you want to inspire also in a way that’s not cheesy or weird. So make sure that you’re really focusing on in on your content and checking out those click through rates. Because that’s going to be something that’s very telling of how engaging your actual content is. Traffic to your site is another thing that we’re looking at for our clients. Good email traffic tells us that you are successfully getting visitors where they need to go in order to get your content or where they need to go from receiving your email. So they’re actually following through with that click. The other thing that the traffic to your site will tell you is that you’re actually getting people who are interested in your brand. And so there is a huge avenue to contact them through email. Um, so it tells you that like, hey, these people are definitely susceptible to email or they’re available for email and then the content that you’re including and how many click throughs you’re getting will tell you whether or not your emails are actually any good. And then also we’re starting to incorporate a lot more survey or email Persona research. So aside from the metrics that you can look at, click through rates, conversion rates, website traffic, how much your list is growing on a monthly basis, et cetera, you can also gain information directly from your customers. And you know what the best way to do that is ask them for it. Yep, there’s this major campaign that’s going on in Klaviyo right now and they’re calling it Customer First Data. And I know we talk a lot about Klaviyo, but this is a really smart thing that all marketers need to look at. All business owners need to start thinking about is rather than stalking and doing the weird thing of trying to hide and snoop and investigate, like, what do people like? What do we think they’ll like? Ask your customers directly. Surveys, yes, they can be really annoying. But how you frame the survey, how you word it, how you can encourage or convince your customer or persuade them to actually fill it out, that’s part of the marketing, right? So if you just say like, oh, we’d really appreciate your feedback. This will just take three minutes, that’s not good enough anymore. You need to let your customers know, hey, things have changed in the digital world. We want to know how we can better serve you. Do you mind filling out a few questions here so that we know what you want from us and we can give it to you? It doesn’t need to be as blunt or edgy as that. Apparently I’m feeling really sassy today, so that’s why talking like that. But when you ask your customers directly, you’re including them in the marketing conversation. So yes, marketing directors and companies, very insightful people. We as email marketers, we are also very insightful people. E commerce business owners, very insightful people. But the people that are going to be the most insightful about what your customers want are your customers. So leverage them where you can, where it makes sense. Bring them into that boardroom meeting when you’re trying to figure out your next marketing strategy. Hey, this is what our customers said they wanted. So let’s give it to them. And you’ll have customers that are more than happy, happy to engage, to click, to buy, to do whatever it is that you ask. Regardless of whether or not Apple is controlling how you see your open rates, leverage your customers. In this new time that we’re in in email marketing and on Top of leveraging the KPIs that are less impacted by Apple’s change, you can also use different tools or benchmark reports that will actually see how your open rates compare to that of other brands in the industry. So that’s always a helpful thing too, is kind of doing an analysis or a comparison on a peer to peer or industry, like in the industry basis.

Vira: 19:59

Because basically everyone will be affected by the same thing. Right? That’s why benchmark reports like Klaviyo has are so powerful. Because regardless of how, well how inflated your rates are, everyone’s rates are inflated. So it will just show you how you compare to other peers in your group or like to the industry in general. I love those reports.

Alissa: 20:19

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing that you can do as well as you can compare based on open rates in the past, so anything from like beginning of sales, September backwards, those are more realistic open rates. You can look at how much Apple has inflated your open rates and you’ll be able to have a rough estimate, a rough idea of whether or not the open rates are super, super inflated or if it’s just a minor thing. And you can continue to email as you always have. So there’s just some critical thinking that goes into all these changes.

Vira: 20:48

Right. And there is also, there is also this formula. Remember Alisa, you even like recorded a quick like internal video on how to like calculate how many people on your list are like that Apple devices or like Apple Mail or whatever. And like the higher, the higher your percentage is, the more chances that your account will be affected by like this update. Right?

Alissa: 21:10

Yeah, it’s true. Yeah. And that’s something that, that’s a feature in Klaviyo for all of you who are using other ESPs. If you have the ability to kind of single out who’s using an Apple device or Apple Mail in order to open their emails, then you’ll be able to kind of get an idea of what percentage of your customer base is likely to be impacted. Because the other thing you have to remember that we mentioned at the start of this episode is people have to go out of their way to say like, yes, hide my privacy settings. If people haven’t, then they’re not going to be impacted. So that’s the other thing you have to remember. If people are making the cognizant choice to do that, then they will be impacted. So that’s the other thing. You’ll have a percentage and then it’s a percentage of that percentage. So all is not doomed.

Vira: 22:19

All is not doomed. Second thing that you need to consider is actually expanding your engaged segment definition or like tweaking, changing your segment engaged segment definition. And for us here at Flowing, the engagement versus engaged versus unengaged segments were our like main segments that we were using our bread and butter or whatever. You might be wondering like what to do about your engaged segment now when you cannot track those like engagements very accurately. Well we recommend changing the definition of the segment to include other sort of like signals of engagement. You can track purchases, you can track site activity whether or not someone like went to the website or like viewed that specific product. You can also track clicks, just like to name a few. If you have any like automations that triggers based off emails opens, this might need to be revised as well. So maybe like consider expanding the definition of the trigger to include other engagement criteria, clicks, products, views again like purchases and stuff like that. Same applies to your list cleaning. Right. Before like in the past to clean the list we followed like this sort of formula. If a subscriber received 10 emails but have opened 0 emails or clicked on 0 emails in the last whatever, like 60 days or like 90 days, whatever industry you’re in, then this person is considered like unengaged and this person is considered like inactive and will suppress this person. Well, with a new policy we are still sort of like following the same, same thinking but we are adding more information, more like engagement data to that definition of that segment. Right. So now we only suppress someone from the list if they has not clicked, they has not placed the order, they hasn’t been active, they hasn’t been active on the website and they haven’t like opened the email as well. Right. So we still can use the same logic, engaged versus unengaged but the definition will need to, to be revised a little bit.

Alissa: 24:27

I love that. I think that’s so smart. And it’s true. Just again it’s that shift in mindset, shift in definition, shift in how you kind of shift things around.

Vira: 24:36

Yeah, actually I actually yesterday read this blog from like HubSpot where they say that it’s an era of inbound marketing. So basically this is like a business mythology that attracts customers by creating interesting valuable content and experiences tailored specifically to them and delivering it to them. So again it’s not about the clicks anymore, it’s not about the open rates, it’s about the value. So I’m kind of excited about this changes now. I mean when we started talking to you, right. Like I.

Alissa: 25:08

It’s a weird thing cause like everyone’s in panic mode and then it takes place and we’re all like, oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. We’re just like, oh, it’s a challenge. This is really cool. So the other, the very last thing is start testing content. So we usually anticipate that our sort of algorithm for AB testing and smart send time would be powerful enough, even with inflated open rates. So one of the really easy things to do is just try some A B testing on subject lines just to understand what verbiage, what style, what emojis, what call to actions will work best for your subject lines moving forward. And just know that your A B test will be a little bit inflated. So even though the open rates are inflated, you can still do testing so that you can get a better understanding of what’s working better. So if your normal open rates are like 28% and now you’re seeing open rates that are like 34%, it’s not a bad thing for you to like, you know, push the boundaries and see if you can get to like 52% open rate.

Vira: 26:11

Right.

Alissa: 26:12

That’s a little bit inflated, of course, but you’re improving your open rates, so you can still do that. And if you really think about it, an AB test is splitting everything 50, 50 randomly. So have no idea if the majority of people in variation A versus B are Apple Mail users.

Vira: 26:30

Yeah.

Alissa: 26:31

So just remembering that when you’re doing these tests based on open rate, it could be inflated. And that’s okay because testing is testing, and that’s what we always want to do as marketers. So before the iOS 15 changes were put in place, I would hope that you kind of took advantage of knowing that it was coming and actually started to age. A B test anywhere where open rates were involved. So that way you could be in this Q4 era and be confident knowing that what is the best for the customer would actually work in terms of subject lines, et cetera. And the same for the smart send time. However, we’ve kind of made it. We’re now in this time where iOS15 still exists now. So it’s a little. It’s kind of one of those hindsight things. Right. Hindsight is 20 20. However, you can still put tests in place. You can still use open rates. With a grain of salt. Right. Or is it a pinch of salt?

Vira: 27:24

With a pinch of salt. Grain, I think.

Alissa: 27:25

Is it grain?

Vira: 27:27

Whatever.

Alissa: 27:28

Both look grain or pinch however much salt you prefer. Just look at the open rates knowing, like, yes, they are inflated a little bit, but testing can still take place. You can still gauge and understand what Works for your clients and what doesn’t. And the other thing, again, this goes back to that open rate. So side of things where that’s not the only metric that you’re basing it on. Right. You’re basing things off of the content, off of the relevance, off of how engaged your customer base is with you. Who knows, maybe now you need to start sending out more emails that actually encourage customer responses. That’s a great way to leverage engage what your customer engagement is. So make sure that you’re really taking the time to ab test where it matters and where it’s going to impact in the best way possible. But also also remembering that open rates aren’t the end all, be all. And there are many other things that will tell you whether or not you’re doing a good job in your email marketing along with the smart. Oh, go ahead, Vira, go ahead.

Vira: 28:22

Yeah, no, I was just like about to add that no matter like what you do, just like Yolisa said, with those like numbers and stuff, they will be inflated. But at least this will show you that. Am I doing a good job? Yes, I’m doing a good job with this specific like item and not this one. So everyone’s rates are inflated. But just like be, be courageous and be creative and. Yeah, and you’ll, you’ll be fine.

Alissa: 28:47

And be strategic about how you’re looking at data as well.

Vira: 28:50

Exactly.

Alissa: 28:51

And the other thing to note is for the smart send time, the algorithm for smart Send time in Klaviyo anyways, it doesn’t look at open data on the individual level, so your optimal send time results should still remain pretty accurate. However, it’ll just take a little longer to calculate, which is not the end of the world. So you’ll still have a good idea of when you should be sending your emails. You’ll still have a very good idea idea about who’s clicking through your email.

Vira: 29:13

Exactly.

Alissa: 29:14

You’ll still have a good idea about who’s engaging. The one thing that’s just a little off now is the open rate and that’s okay. The thing that we care about is at the end of the day, what’s converting, what’s keeping my customers happy. And we’ve given a ton of different points on how to kind of combat that as much as possible. So as Vira mentioned, don’t panic. Everything’s going to be all right. Keep emailing. Email is not over. You can still be an extremely impactful and effective email marketer. Despite what Apple throws our way. Everything, everything’s going to be okay. And the other thing to note, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but SMS marketing is still a thing and you can still try that out as well alongside of your emails. So you can also give that a go and check that out to make sure that your message is being delivered in a timely manner. That’s another like mini little tip or hack. So, yeah, yeah, many different marketing avenues, many different things that you can do. Email is not dead. And keep pressing on.

Vira: 30:10

Email is not dead, people. Apple is always starting this, like new trends and like different industries. But I feel like it’s in the end of the spam era probably because people will, they will try to be better with what they say in the email. So Apple a day. Take Apple a day keeps what away?

Alissa: 30:27

The doctor away or like a spammer or the spammer away. And Apple a day keeps the spam away. That’s amazing. I mean, yeah, that’s our quote. That’s our quote for today.

Vira: 30:39

That’s our new, new motto for today for this podcast. I love it. Anyways, you guys, thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, your family, with your Apple users and Apple enthusiasts. And if you want to get involved in the community, join us at flowium.com/community and if you leave us a podcast review, just screenshot your podcast, send us your screenshot, your review. Send us your review and you will get Flowium socks from us.

Alissa: 31:11

I love it.

Vira: 31:12

Yeah, the Flowium socks.

Alissa: 31:14

I want a pair. We don’t even have a pair. We don’t know and we work here. Yeah, we record the episodes. Guys, make sure that you check us out next week. This is actually an interesting, an interesting episode that we’re going to be having next week. We’re going to talk about high ticket sales. 3 Ways to Sell expensive stuff on the Internet via email marketing specifically, of course. But this is one that we actually had kind of a bit of a question about from one of our listeners. So I’m really excited to tackle this because this has our gears turning. So if you sell expensive stuff on the Internet, make sure that you come back next week. If you don’t come back next week anyways, because we’re going to be talking about expensive stuff. And who doesn’t like expensive stuff, right?

Vira: 32:00

Thank you so much for listening.