iOS15: What It Means For Email & eCommerce
As Apple continues its rampage in the name of privacy, it can seem like digital marketers can't catch a break. First, iOS 14.5 allows users to 'opt out' of tracking for Facebook Ads, resulting in reported ROAS plummeting and attribution issues-galore. Now iOS15, expected to land as soon as September, will target email, offering the user greater control over how email senders can track their engagement and identity.
Here's the low down and what you can do to prepare for these changes.
The Key Changes
For Apple users upgrading to iOS15 and using Apple Mail:
Users can opt out of open tracking using "Mail Privacy Protection"
Users can hide their true email by using a randomised Apple address
Users can hide their IP address from senders
It's important to note that Apple Mail accounts for only approximately 35% of global email opens, so for users using another app such as Gmail, they'll remain unaffected.
What It Means For eCommerce Stores
Segmentation will become harder: Opens are important - plenty of users open and don't click, but may purchase later. Because reported open rates will decline, it will become that much harder for stores to segment campaigns and send frequency based on a user's appetite for hearing from a brand - and that's not great for the end user
Geographic personalisation will become harder: Email platforms use IP addresses to determine a user's location, so we can personalise the content and times we send. If a user blocks their IP address, we have to rely on other data sources.
Expect issues with deliverability: To minimise the chances of ending up in spam boxes, regular list cleaning is a must. Without open rates as well as the added issue of Apple's randomised emails, it will be harder for email platforms to both identify disengaged subscribers and distinguish between fake/bot emails and true emails.
What To Do About It
Know Your Benchmarks: Make sure you record your average metrics over the past 3-6 months for your primary segments and automated flows, including open and click rates. This way, you'll be able to tell if and when this change starts to affect your email performance. Consider A/B testing subject lines now ahead of the change, to gain data on what works best so you can be less reliant on open rates.
Click Rates Are The New Open Rates: Sort of - opens do matter, much like impressions on Display ads matter in addition to clicks. But the primary goal of your email channel is to drive traffic and click tracking will be unaffected by iOS15, so we'll need to rely on this metric more heavily for engagement data. Once the change hits, you'll need to adjust your segment rules to prioritise clicks over opens, overlaid with recency and purchase data (Klaviyo's seamless integration with Shopify makes this easy as pie) - you should already be using a wide variety of metrics for effective segmentation.
Check Your UTMs and Monitor Traffic: Email performance doesn't stop at the click - you need to monitor how it performs on-site in terms of both behaviour and conversion rate. Ensure your UTM tracking across source, medium and campaign is setup correctly - for some email platforms, this isn't set by default and often needs to be applied at the campaign level. If you're on Klaviyo, you can configure account-level UTM tracking so you can set it and forget it. Don't forget to split UTM tracking between campaigns and flows.
Ensure Your Geographical Data Is Sound: For Shopify stores running multi-region setups, personalising campaigns and communication by store can be challenging as IP addresses are not wholly accurate. If you're syncing Shopify data to Klaviyo, you can use a customer's billing address for segmentation. For non-customers, consider asking for country at the sign up stage, or inferring it based on the sign up source. This would require segmenting your lead campaigns if you aren't already.
Clean Your List Now: To reduce deliverability issues, it's important to perform regular list cleaning, but it's especially important to do now, before these changes arrive, as it will be more challenging to do so later. For example, create a segment of subscribers who have received 20 or more emails over the past year and opened none. A word of warning if you're on Klaviyo - make sure you suppress these profiles and don't delete them, as they're still valuable for CRM purposes such as syncing Facebook ads custom audiences.
Diversify Your Platforms: Email is still one of the most important direct mail channels, but it's not the only one. It's essential to ensure your store doesn't rely too heavily on a single traffic channel, so be sure to experiment with other direct channels, including push notifications or SMS and even direct mail (you heard it here first).
As with all things digital, the only certainty is change, so let's continue to roll with the punches, pivot, experiment and share our insights! If you have any other ideas on how to combat iOS15, please leave a comment.