Earlier this year, when Apple announced its email privacy protection, it sent marketers into a frenzy. No one knows exactly what impact the new feature will have, but we know it will change the way we think about and report on email marketing metrics.
The announcement bears the shadow of GDPR, which makes people in the digital marketing field remember it. Although it seems that the impact of MPP will not be so extensive, this feature still has a wide-ranging impact on the future of email.
Although many marketers will grieve for the loss of data (such as opening and location), we believe that MPP is actually a good thing for everyone in the email marketing industry.
why is that.
How email privacy protection affects marketers
If you have heard of these terms Mail privacy protection, MPP, or iOS 15 I’ve been tossing about them for the past few months, but I’m not sure what they actually mean, don’t worry! We will catch up with you soon.
In September, Apple released a new software update, iOS 15. What follows is a new feature: mail privacy protection.
In short, MPP does two things:
- Effectively disable open tracking
- Hide the user’s IP address and eliminate the ability of email marketers to know their location
For more information on how it works, make sure Check out our guide. But to understand the actual effect of this feature, you need to understand these two things.
Now, while this sounds good, it has some serious effects on email marketers.The first and most obvious meaning is that MPP greatly reduces the reliability of open rate tracking, and uses the future of open rate as a measurement standard. In serious danger. As if changing our metrics and reports is not enough, it also means that you may need to reconsider any automated journeys you set up that have automated steps based on whether a person opens an email.
Although the loss of geographic data does not seem to be that serious, many marketers rely on this data for list segmentation. For example, if you plan to send different emails to different subscribers based on location, it can be a bit tricky. You now don’t have to rely on the automatic collection of this data, but must directly ask the user for this data.
Losing this data also means Send time optimization -A popular feature in ESP-will be less reliable because it does not have location data for many users.
Why this is good for the future of email
This doesn’t sound like a victory for marketers, does it? Although we agree that the loss of certain data and features will cause inconvenience, we do believe that MPP will eventually become a good thing for the future of email.
how?because MPP will force marketers to focus on the experience they are creating, Instead of optimizing their campaigns for empty metrics (such as open rates).
and All email marketing metrics For us, it has become too easy for marketers to define success through top indicators such as open rate. Although these indicators are helpful, they are not the ultimate goal.
Our hope for MPP is that marketers will not feel the need to write a deceptive subject line that over-promises and under-delivers the actual content in the email, and it is more necessary to seize every opportunity to provide Value and enhance their subscriber experience.
Hey, by focusing more on the experience you create via email and the value you provide to subscribers, it is very likely that your metrics will start to get better anyway. What is interesting is how it works😉
How to focus on user experience in email marketing
So, what does it mean to follow the e-mail experience?
Don’t fool your subject line or CTA
As we mentioned, in order to see higher open rates or click-through rates, it’s easy to feel the need to write deceptive, over-promising subject lines or calls to action. But in the end, when subscribers find that you have been letting them down with your actual content, they will never come back.
To be clear, we are not saying that you should not follow Best Practices And make your subject line and CTA clear and engaging. We just say that you should not try to improve your statistics at the expense of subscribers. If you can’t make the content of your email or the content you link to compelling without lying, you probably shouldn’t send it in the first place.
Align your email goals with business goals, not just metrics
Although email-specific indicators such as open rates are useful indicators of success, they themselves are not the definition of success. We don’t just send emails to get people to open it-we do help with larger marketing and business goals, such as website visits, purchases, or revenue generated.
Now that indicators such as open rate and click-to-open rate (CTOR) no longer exist, it is time to start rethinking how we will define email success. Doing so is also a good time to ensure that your email marketing strategy is based on broader business goals.
Focus on adding value
To be honest, most marketing emails feel like noise. The inbox is crowded and users are constantly scanning to decipher what is important and what is not.
So, what is the key to becoming one of the names that people pay attention to? Consistently add value to your subscribers.
This means different things for different types of people and businesses, but a good question to ask before sending marketing emails is whether you have a reason to be in their inbox. If you don’t do this, and you just send for sending, then it’s best to reconsider it.
Start thinking about how to end
When creating a marketing campaign or a single marketing email, it is important to keep the end goal in mind at the beginning. To be precise, what do you want to teach your subscribers, tell them, and guide them? Knowing the actions you want them to take before you start will help inform all the decisions you made when creating the actual event, resulting in a better email experience for everyone.
wrap up
Earlier this year, Apple suddenly announced the protection of email privacy, which put the email marketing world in a difficult position. Although it may sound scary at first, marketers will adapt (as they do with all other major technological updates), and in the end, we think they will have a better life because of it.
Hope that MPP will re-focus on the experience marketers create for subscribers.
