Your Recent Higher Open Rates Are Misleading: How Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Will Impact Higher Education Marketers
On June 7, Apple posted a press release detailing the upcoming launch of iOS 15, among several other updates. While there are many key points worth noting, none will impact higher education marketers more than Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) option.
What does this mean and who does it affect?
In mid-September, Apple users began to receive the opportunity to update their operating systems to iOS 15. As part of this update, users were given the option to opt in to Mail Privacy Protection, which “works by hiding your IP address and loading remote content privately in the background, even when you don’t open the message. This makes it harder for senders to follow your Mail activity.” Users can opt in by selecting the defaulted “Protect Mail activity” or can opt out by selecting “Don’t protect Mail activity.”
While it’s unlikely that all users have updated their devices and even less likely that everyone opted in to MPP, this change will no doubt have an impact on data reporting and tracking within email marketing. The most immediate change will be that all emails that pass through MPP will be marked as opened, even if the user does not open them (or moves them directly to trash).
The good news for higher education marketers is that MPP will not affect their entire audience. Prospective students, in turn, must meet the following criteria: (1) Use an iPhone or other Apple device, (2) Make use of Apple Mail to receive their email, and (3) Have opted in to Mail Privacy Protection. Apple Mail is popular, but many students still prefer Gmail. One can thus think of MPP as impacting a subset of a subset of students. Take note, though: emails forwarded to Apple Mail through other accounts (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) will face the same MPP fate.
