Mass mailing companies are watching Apple news with concern

There is a growing concern among companies that have mass emailing as a business model that one of the features announced by Apple in the presentation of WWDC 2021 in particular, Mail Privacy Protection, could bring down the entire industry. .

During the presentation event of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, the company announced that it was familiar with Mail Privacy Protection, one of the new features focused on privacy that limits the ability to collect information about its users through advertising emails.

As explained by Apple in a subsequent WWDC session, emails may contain remote images used to collect analytical information; Remote images that are opened and retrieved from third-party servers leave a data trail showing when, where and on what type of device an email was read.

As Platformer's Casey Newton pointed out, data from imaging and other strategies is vital to marketers, newsletter publishers, and other businesses based on an email delivery model. Email open rates provide insight into audience engagement and the overall effectiveness of a campaign - information that, when critical time comes, translates into decisions about how to spend money on advertising.

Mail Privacy Protection limits the set of data that can be obtained by users by opening an email for users of the Mail app on iOS and Mac.

It is unclear exactly how Apple will enforce this limitation (of opening remote images contained in emails), although it has said that its system will mask users' IP addresses, preventing senders from knowing when an email is opened and blocking the collected data through invisible pixels. Some analysts have suggested that the inbox be opened and selected by an intermediate server before the content is sent to users.

Apple detailed the effectiveness of Mail's Privacy Shield and offered an explicit warning to editors in an online WWDC session about new iOS privacy tools.

“If you've used remote imagery to measure the impact of your campaigns, there are some changes you should be aware of. Since the mail content can be loaded automatically after delivery, the mail display time will no longer be correct. And because that content loads without revealing people's IP addresses and without headers, the location and type of device reading the email isn't revealed. And you'll see your emails opened regardless of whether the user reads them or not, ”said Garrett Reid, Apple's privacy engineering specialist.

As the iOS 15 beta testers noted, users will have the opportunity to "Protect Mail Activity" when they first open the Apple app. The feature is also enabled by default in the system settings.

As with App Tracking Transparency, Mail Privacy Protection will likely see high acceptance rates (or more accurately, prevent third-party tracking). Depending on who you ask, this could greatly affect ad-supported email activity.

A report from Nieman Lab on Tuesday analyzed the possible ramifications of Apple's launch of the new feature.

"The most recent numbers of Litmus' market share, as of May 2021, 93,5% of all emails opened on phones arrive in Apple Mail on iPhone or iPad," writes Joshua Benson. "On the desktop, Apple Mail on the Mac is responsible for 58,4% of all open emails."

Ad-based newsletters may have to look for workarounds, but Newton says the situation isn't that bad for paid newsletters.

"Writers can triangulate reader engagement with many metrics that are still available to them, including the visits their stories get on the web, the overall growth of their mailing list, and most importantly, the growth of their revenue," writes Newton. .

The impact Mail Privacy Protection will have on the industry, if any, will be revealed when iOS 15 and macOS Monterey launch this fall.

Just in case, you can start limiting that data by preventing the server images from being loaded into emails.