How does MPP affect email marketing?
Article overview
Although the appearance of MPP (Mail Privacy Protection) took place over a year ago, many email marketers still do not fully understand what this functionality introduced by Apple is. Today you will learn some facts that will help you better understand this topic and perhaps use this knowledge in planning your marketing activities.
What is MPP?
On June 7, 2021, Apple announced a novelty at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which caused quite a stir in the email marketing industry. We are talking about MPP, or Mail Privacy Protection. Then on September 20 of the same year, MPP went live in the Mail app on devices running iOS 15 or later. The whole functionality consists in protecting the privacy of e-mail and the possibility of hiding the recipient's IP address, which means that senders cannot in practice determine whether the recipient has actually opened such messages and, moreover, they cannot determine his location. The consequence of this was the instant spread of information about the death of one of the most important email marketing factors, i.e. the OR (Open Rate) rate.
Impact on email marketing
Of course, the aforementioned change, in addition made by such a strong player as Apple, could not but have an impact on email marketing. One of the main reasons is that Apple Mail is one of the most popular email clients in use today. What's more, according to available data, this application even accounts for slightly more than half of the market share.
The main consequence is a significant decrease in trust in relation to the email open rate. Marketers lost confidence whether the recipient actually opened his message, or maybe Apple did it for him, and he really didn't even see it. Unfortunately, this has also caused a lot of confusion in terms of triggering automation through actions based on openings, e.g. sending an automatic email to people who have not opened the message. In addition, the situation is similar in the case of non-openers campaigns, i.e. the manual equivalent of the aforementioned automation. Interestingly, since the introduction of MPP, we can record noticeable increases in the open rate. However, it should be borne in mind that Apple somewhat artificially inflates this result. This aspect is worth keeping in mind when analyzing your own campaigns. Today, an OR of 45% may correspond to, for example, 30% before the change.
Hence? If our OR artificially increases, we can automatically expect a lowered CTOR (Click Through Open Rate), which is also one of the favorites among most email marketers. It tells us what percentage of people who opened an email clicked on at least one link in it.
Fortunately, the change introduced by Apple did not affect the CTR (Click Through Rate). This is still a reliable data, which even gained in value after the introduction of MPP. Thanks to it, we can assess the engagement generated by our campaign, for example by analyzing how many clicks a given mailing generated - whether it aroused interest or not.
Another issue is the reduced credibility of the previously popular A/B tests for the title of the news. As I mentioned in a previous article, a very accurate approach in theory would be to test two title variants before shipping on a reduced sample, say 30%, and then ship the winning variant to the remaining 70%. Unfortunately, after the entry into force of the MPP, this functionality lost its credibility.
Summary
Let us remember, however, that email marketing still generates the highest return on investment among all available marketing activities. It must also be honestly admitted that the only overriding goal has never been, is not and probably will not be to care about the OR factor. It is important that the campaigns are well planned and optimized for the expected conversion, which is definitely the purchase of the advertised product by the recipient. The change implemented by Apple should only slightly change the perception of email marketing and related activities. In many cases, you just need to redefine the measure of your success. It can be a conversion rate, clicks or e.g. the pace of subscriber list development. Many automations, in which the main determinant of success or trigger for us so far were openings, can be dodged with clicks. You should constantly hone your skills, gain new experience in this field and use the best currently available practices.
The changes introduced by Apple are certainly not the last in this area. Nowadays, more and more attention is paid to the protection of personal data of users of various corners of the Internet (and not only), so over time there may be many more such solutions and it will not necessarily be Apple itself. The basis for actions in such a situation is continuous market monitoring in search of the best solutions and constant avoidance of digital obstacles.
Have you started to wonder how many recipients from your base can use the Apple Mail application and protect their activity in this way? Or maybe you knew about it, but you feel that you have not implemented all the solutions to optimize your activities in the best possible way? No matter which case you are - if you would like to discuss this topic with me and discuss your case together, please contact me using the contact form below!
