Cheat Sheet: Why email marketers are calling Apple’s iOS 15 update ‘a proverbial nail in the coffin’

By Kimeko McCoy

At the Apple Event yesterday, the tech giant revealed its latest slew of offerings, including the iPhone 13 and new Apple Watch, slated to hit the market in coming days. Mention of iOS 15 was only a footnote, but updates like Hide My Email and other privacy related features have advertisers in a tizzy as Apple continues its crackdown on data privacy.

“When it comes to email marketing, this move puts a proverbial nail in the coffin for email open rates,” said Greg Zakowicz, director of content at Omnisend, an email marketing and SMS platform.

Currently, marketers use email open rates as a metric of success in email marketing campaigns. Marketers say iOS 15’s new features curb those open rates, hindering some from even appearing in personal inboxes, meaning in-email link clicks will become increasingly important.

iOS 15 is Apple’s latest push to make a world without individual tracking a reality. It builds on top of already restrictive measures including those aimed at fingerprinting and iOS 14 updates that made mobile targeting capabilities more difficult. This most recent iteration complicates the process marketers use to track people through emails.

Ahead of its official launch slated for this fall, email marketers have already started talking about the impact iOS 15 may have on their work.

The key details:

iOS 15, which was announced earlier this year, is expected to launch this fall, introducing new features including Hide My Email and iCloud + Private Relay.
iOS 15 builds upon iOS 14, which pushed many marketers that rely on social media to build an audience to diversify their ad spend sooner rather than later.
Marketers speculate Apple is moving away from allowing third-party tracking to build its own walled garden and ad business.

What does iOS 15 mean for email marketing?

Since its announcement earlier this summer, iOS 15 has been a talking point for marketers, many of which are still reeling from the changes iOS 14 delivered on mobile tracking capabilities.

iOS 15 introduces more user protection from third-party trackers, including mail privacy protection that stops email senders from collecting data via invisible pixels, according to an Apple newsroom blog post. The update also hides user IP addresses, limiting third-party entities’ ability to track users across the internet. Finally, the Hide My Email feature allows Apple product users to utilize random email addresses that forward to their inbox to their personal inbox, thus keeping personal email addresses private.

When all is said and done, marketers say the update hinders advertisers’ ability to measure success across email marketing campaigns.

Blow by blow, Apple has made it clear that it’s looking to end “surveillance marketing,” “where marketers can snoop on indirect interactions that consumers have with brands,” and phasing out third and second-party data, said to Wayne Coburn, group product manager at cross-platform marketing platform Iterable.

“Since they will become an unreliable marketing metric, marketers will need to focus on more meaningful email engagement, like generating clicks,” said Omnisend’s Zakowicz.

How are marketers …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron