In early June, Apple brings its upcoming updates for iOS 15 that are expected to help users to stay focused on-device intelligence. The update is expected to be released between September and November. Apple users will be able to turn off open tracking, hide their IP address and hide their email address.
As an email marketer, the biggest challenge is that open rates will be turned off by most of the users. With Apple releasing iOS 14.5 and its app tracking update before, most of the users decided to leave tracking disabled. So, a similar adoption rate is expected with iOS 15.
Apple has up to 58% of the email client market share and about 90.5% of mobile email opens are on an iPhone.
After the ios15 update marketers and business owners may face low email open rates and IP data. So, lets see how ios 15 update is going to affect email marketing.
Impact of ios15 on Email Marketing
This can impact largely on email marketing strategies.
According to Mandi Moshay, (Director of Retention for Common Thread Collective)-
“While the open rate as a metric is easy to pivot away from, there’s so much within a healthy email program that’s reliant on open data that will have to be pivoted.”
The update will affect email campaigns and automation workflows. Email open rates as a part of the engagement metric in retention and re-engagement marketing will need to be updated. Also, deliverability tracking is important as this will let you track how much your email deliverability is affected.
Email segmentation strategy will be impacted largely that determines how much a recipient wants to receive your emails.
Disabling open tracking, IP-based geo-segmentation won’t be helpful if recipients don’t show their true IP addresses. It depends on every good marketer on how quickly they adapt to updates.
Things To Do Before and After ios 15 Update
Preparing for the iOS 15 update is going to be important to measure engagement, deliverability, and certain behavior.
Here are some steps that every marketer should focus on-
- Start A/B testing- Test variations of your email subject lines for email automation. This will help you to find the successful version before the update. Apart from measuring the open rate, measure the effectiveness of subject lines to generate the most clicks.
- A/B test the content- Test the content and copy of your automated emails. This will ensure you are providing recipients the most optimized email possible.
- Clean your lists of inactive contacts as you won’t be able to use open rate data to manage your deliverability.
Open data is the best way to gauge engagement and interest. This will help you to schedule these actions in advance to use data.
Focus on Click Rates
The goal of any campaign is to have conversions. So, marketers need to focus on click rates.
For instance, calculate click rates with the number of clicks compared to emails sent. Hence, there won’t be any impact on performance benchmarks. Check whether you need to optimize your click rate by comparing it to similar brands.
Expand Your Engagement-Based Segments
Engagement-based segments are not mainly dependent on open rates. Other aspects are important such as clicks and purchase activity. Only a small number of people will meet this criterion once the update rolls out. So, it’s always recommended to continue having highly targeted engagement segments.
Look For New Channels
Always opt for other channels such as SMS and push notifications to your marketing strategy. These will help you to expand your reach.
It is believed that SMS conversion rates are likely to get converted by more than 100%. On the other hand, web push notifications have a 28% conversion rate.
Use these channels in your omnichannel automation workflows. This helps to bypass the problems of not having complete open data. For instance, sending an SMS to your customer on delay if they haven’t yet clicked on your email.
Communicate Urgency To Recipients
With the iOS 15 update, countdown timers are the most common type of live data that will be affected. So, if your strategy depends on featuring things with set dates and using countdown timers to increase urgency, then timers will no longer function.
That is why adopting other methods such as more frequent emails or the use of graphics to communicate urgency.
Email List Management
For every email sender, it is important to clean their lists of inactive subscribers. These inactive subscribers are also known as spam traps.
If you continue to email inactive contacts beyond email sending limits, email service providers (Google, Yahoo, etc) can mark you as spammers. Then your emails will land in junk or spam folders.
Email open rates and the number of clicks are the best way to identify inactive email addresses. So, always clean your email lists to maintain good deliverability.
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