It isn’t profitable or useful to panic over platform updates. That said, it’s understandable there are a lot of questions around iOs 15 and what it will mean for email marketing.
The update causing the biggest stir is around changes to email tracking:
Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from learning whether an email has been opened, and hides IP addresses so senders can’t learn a user’s location or use it to build a profile on them.
A few important implications:
- Brands will no longer be able to report on open/engagement rates for emails opened on iOs devices without users opting into sharing that info.
- Geo-focused email segments will require the brand to earn that info from the user as opposed to it being auto-reported.
The good news: this update currently impacts only iOs smartphones (granted, that makes up around 45% of the email market).
The bad news: user behavior trends indicate that most users either don’t want to or know how to opt into sharing conversion data (96%).
The ugly news: there are no guarantees that email service providers (ESPs) won’t force all emails to abide by these rules (meaning that it could go from a contained reporting glitch to an industry-wide blow to the data).
IOs 15 is due to release in September 2021 (with a beta downloadable in July), which means we have a bit of time to prepare.
Here are three mission-critical action items to take:
- Clean up your inactive lists now while you have open rates to guide you. While there will likely be modeling solutions on the horizon, being able to accurately identify engaged users will be going away in the fall.
- Test your subject lines and run any potential A/B tests before August. If you feel good about your content (your subject line templates consistently get better than 30% open rates), you may want to hold off as we’re about to hit the holiday season.
- Communicate this change and its implications to your clients/teams, and identify opportunities for other reporting tools to shore up the data gaps. A great way to do this is with UTMs, which will allow some degree of tracking/attribution.
The great news for Justuno Plus customers is they don’t need to rely on just email/retention marketing to come out ahead. By using Audience Sync and other Plus features, you can ensure all your traffic sources are working as intelligently as possible and capturing as much owned data as possible.
What’s very clear is that privacy and consumer data are only going to become more and more protected, requiring marketers to gather consent, maintain privacy, and work towards being reliant only on first-party data. If you are concerned about what iOs 15 might mean for you, are interested in how Justuno can help you collect and use more first-party data, or just want to improve conversions on your website–we’ve got you covered. Book a demo to speak with one of our team members so you can head into fall confidently.
