A new GetApp study finds that marketers are expecting significant changes to email marketing strategies in light of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) — but still hold misconceptions about how the policy will affect their business.
Apple says that, in the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection helps protect your privacy by preventing email senders from learning information about your Mail activity. When you turn it on, it hides your IP address so senders can’t link it to your other online activity or determine your location. It also prevents senders from seeing if you’ve opened the email they sent you.
The study by GetApp — the “recommendation engine for small businesses” — examined email and social media marketing tactics at over 275 businesses and revealed that 64% of marketers believe that MPP will forever change email marketing.
In the survey, 84% of marketers say email marketing is critical to their business success. However, MPP—a new option in Apple iOS 15 device settings that prevents email senders from collecting user information—limits email marketers from accurately measuring open rates, the primary email marketing performance metric used by nearly two in three marketers.
What’s more, 57% of marketers admit that MPP has negatively impacted their team’s ability to capture customer data. As consumer privacy regulations strengthen, marketers are forced to innovate their email marketing practices that support business goals.
Although 65% of marketers surveyed indicate that they are familiar with MPP, there are misconceptions about the new privacy change. A majority of marketers (77%) falsely believe that the updates were turned on automatically for iPhone users, while in fact, users have to opt in to the update. Misconceptions like this indicate why 70% of marketers want additional training and education on the full impact of MPP as it relates to their company.
“Even though MPP hasn’t brought about a huge impact to email initiatives yet, marketers can expect that it will further disrupt the technology they leverage for email marketing. That’s why it’s important to have a plan,” says Meghan Bazaman, senior marketing analyst at GetApp.
She adds that the study confirms that marketers must educate themselves further to understand how MPP will affect their email marketing efforts. Sixty-one percent already indicate that the new privacy change has given their company the opportunity to innovate its email marketing strategy. It’s time for marketers to reevaluate tactics that rely solely on open rates and update them with new performance metrics.
Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
