Apple is releasing its latest software update and it will impact everyone in the email
marketing industry. If you think this is only affecting Apple and iCloud email addresses
you are mistaken. This will take affect for every user who has an Apple device
regardless of their email address. Users who set up Apple mail on an iPhone, iPad,
iMac, or laptop will be asked by Apple if they want to have secure email. The industry
expects 25% adoption by the end of this month and over 50% adoption by the end of
October. This will account for a significant amount of US email recipients. Every email
they receive will now be shown in the ESP as an open regardless of the fact if they
open their mail app or even turn on their device.
Open Rates Will Cease to Exist
Once adoption takes place it will be impossible to separate out these delivered emails
which appear as opens vs true opens. Open rates will increase at an exponential rate
and essentially have no value as a metric.
What Next?
1. Performance – there is little to be worried about. We currently, and always have,
reported on a wide range of metrics – opens just one of them, and the least correlated to
revenue at that. With all the historical data we have for all other metrics, our reporting
will continue to provide value insights using the other KPI’s.
2. Testing –specifically in regards to Subject Lines – all tests are measured using
multiple KPIs. For most tests, clicks, revenue and conversion rate are the metrics of
choice. But even for subject line testing, we have proven through analysis that clicks are
a better indicator of performance and the metric Subject Line testing should be
assessed on, and Alchemy Worx has long operated on that information. As such, we
will not see much impact here either.
3. Segmentation – in anticipation of this change, our team has been working hard behind
the scenes on redefining the segment sets for each one of our clients by using a
“Segment Equivalency” Table. Essentially this is an analysis done on your database
specifically, aiming to capture the same number of people in open-based segments, by
instead using site visit and click data over longer time periods. This is not a one size fits
all solution but the data below shows some very strong initial results.
Within the next few weeks we will have completed our testing on all our clients and
identified the segments that will replace opens for each client.
