The latest update to the iOS operating system for iPhone and iPads may cause a big change in email open rates.
iOS 15 lets users opt-in to a mail privacy protection feature. If users do so, it will block email senders from being able to get information about how users interacted with the email. Surprisingly, according to an analysis by Validity, an email marketing company, open rates may actually show a substantial increase even though they haven’t been opened by the recipient.
According to Validity, subscribers using the Apple mail client with the privacy protection feature (MPP) will have email images prefetched and cached. That will cause the emails to register as opened if the user never initiates any action. Since Apple may account for as much as 40% of email client usage, this could dramatically impact email open rate reporting.
Besides skewing email open rates, marketers will also lose the ability to track device and location data.