How will the new iOS 15 update impact email marketing?
We're glad you asked.
The main changes include the ability to:
- Hide open email behaviour by pre-loading email images, including tracking pixels.
- Hide specific (e.g., city-level) location data by blocking IP addresses.
- Obscure click-through activity by using a proxy email address.
These changes will impact open rates, making them inflated or inaccurate. Other impacts include incorrect location tracking and inflated revenue attribution.
The impact of these changes will depend on your list size.
For those of you who rely on your email list for a large percentage of your revenue, here are some things to consider:
1. Use click rates as your primary method of engagement. Now that open rates may be inflated or inaccurate, clicks will give you more accurate data.
2. Create content that promotes the user to click. Focus on the content of your emails and A/B test differences, such as the use of images or CTAs.
3. With Klaviyo you can now change how attribution is calculated to click-based attribution. Klaviyo recommends sending to your Apple users separately at first to judge the impact of the update. Based on that segment’s open rate, you can choose to stay with click-based attribution, or go back to opens and clicks.
4. If you have segments defined by open rates, you may need to expand them. For example, for your engaged segment definition, include other signs of engagement, such as purchases, site activity, or clicks.
Although it may feel like everything is changing, there is still data that will be reliable for email engagement:
- Click-through rate
- Who visits your website
- The size of your email list
- Signups for events, webinars, etc.
- Survey data
- Purchases and orders
- Shares on social media
- Subscriber lifetime value
If email opens is a trigger for a particular flow, such as re-sending to people who haven’t opened a specific email, this trigger will be unreliable. Check all your triggers now to prevent issues from arising.
Now that the update is officially released, merchants will have a better understanding of its impact.
Keep an eye on this newsletter for more email best practices in a post-iOS 15 world.
