Apple’s iOS 15 Update – The End of Open Rate Metric?

Last month Apple announced the Apple iOS 15 update. Starting this fall, Apple users can choose to hide their IP addresses and locations which will result in preventing senders from tracking users’ email activity through pixels.

In a nutshell, Apple’s iOS 15 update will give its users:

• The ability to turn off email open tracking
• The ability to block their IP address
• The ability to hide their email address

This privacy update will affect a very important email marketing metric – the email open rate. This means email marketers won’t be able to tell whether their messages are opened or not on all Apple devices and in the Apple Mail App.
The good news is: The iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection is not enabled by default, but it is hard to estimate how many Apple users will click “Accept”.

What can you do?

We have two months to come up with new strategies, but we must start adjusting to the new situation as soon as possible so we can make up for the loss of the open rates metric.
Here’s how you can start adjusting:

• Revisit and adjust your Segments to exclude Open Rate Metric
• Keep an eye on your Deliverability Rate
• Adjust the triggers and flows that rely on the Open Rate Metric
• Clean your list of inactive contacts as soon as possible
• Perform Send Time and Subject Line A/B testing before the update
• Create lists based on users’ location

With that out of the way – here are a few ideas on what to test in your subject lines before the infamous Apple iOS 15 update:

• Personalization vs no personalization
• Length
• Tone of voice
• Emoji vs no emoji
• Usage of numbers and symbols
• Text formatting (capitalization, punctuation, alliteration)
• Word order
• First person vs. second person
• Positive vs. negative
• Using FREE vs FREE synonyms
• Mentioning the discount % vs not mentioning it
• Sense of urgency vs no urgency
• Question vs statement
• Mysterious/vague vs straightforward
• Did you know vs announcement

Extra Tip: Subject lines with less than 50 characters have higher open rates and click-through-rates than those with 50+