Can email marketers send to Apple Private Relay or Hide My Email addresses?

Yes, you can and should email users who have these addresses. These are legitimate subscribers who value their privacy. Treating them as disposable or blocking them can lead to lost engagement and negatively impact your sender reputation. Focus on delivering valuable content and maintaining good email authentication.

How do these Apple privacy features affect email deliverability?

These features affect deliverability primarily by masking the user's real email, which can complicate subscriber identification and customer support. Mail Privacy Protection also impacts open rate tracking, making traditional open rates unreliable. If your emails are consistently marked as spam or your sending practices are poor, Apple's systems can also soft bounce or block (or blacklist) your messages to these relayed addresses.

What are the best practices for handling Apple's private relay and Hide My Email addresses in marketing?

Best practices include not blocking these addresses, focusing on strong email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), shifting to other engagement metrics (clicks, conversions), providing clear unsubscribe options, and ensuring your content is always relevant and valuable. Educating your customer support team about these addresses can also improve user experience.

Can users disable or change their relayed email addresses?

Yes, users have control over their relayed addresses. For Hide My Email , they can create, disable, and delete addresses at any time. For Sign in with Apple , the addresses are tied to specific apps/websites but can still be managed through their Apple ID settings.

What are Apple's privaterelay.apple.com and hide my email and how should they be handled in email marketing? - Troubleshooting - Email deliverability - Knowledge base

Q: How do Apple's Private Relay and Hide My Email features differ?

Private Relay's @privaterelay.appleid.com addresses are automatically generated when users choose to hide their email with Sign in with Apple . Hide My Email , part of iCloud+, allows users to manually create and manage disposable (anonymous) addresses, often using @icloud.com or @privaterelay.appleid.com for various online sign-ups.

Apple has consistently introduced privacy-enhancing features, and two significant ones for email are Private Relay and Hide My Email. These services aim to give users more control over their personal data by masking their true email addresses. While beneficial for user privacy, they present unique challenges for email marketers striving to maintain effective communication and deliverability.

Understanding how these features work is crucial for adapting your email marketing strategies. My goal is to break down these services, explain their differences, and provide practical advice on how to handle them to ensure your messages still reach the inbox and engage your subscribers.

Understanding Apple's email privacy features

Apple's email privacy features, particularly Private Relay and Hide My Email, function by creating an intermediary address that forwards emails to a user's actual inbox. This shielding mechanism prevents senders from directly knowing the user's primary email address, thereby reducing the potential for tracking and unwanted solicitations. While they share this common goal, their implementation and primary use cases differ.

The privaterelay.apple.com domain is primarily associated with Sign in with Apple. When a user chooses to hide their email during a sign-up or login process using this feature, Apple generates a unique, random email address that ends in @privaterelay.appleid.com. This address is automatically created and tied to their Apple ID, forwarding all mail to their personal inbox. You can find more details on how these services function on Apple's support pages.

On the other hand, Hide My Email is a feature available with iCloud+ subscriptions. It allows users to generate unique, random email addresses (often ending in @icloud.com or @privaterelay.appleid.com) for any online service, not just those supporting Sign in with Apple. Users can create, manage, and delete these addresses directly from their iCloud settings, giving them more granular control over where their mail comes from.

Sign in with Apple private relay

Generation: Automatically generated during the Sign in with Apple process for apps and websites.
Domain: Exclusively uses @privaterelay.appleid.com.
Control: Managed through Apple ID settings, linked directly to the application or website it was created for.
Purpose: Streamlined login and privacy for services that integrate with Sign in with Apple.

The impact on email marketing and deliverability

The introduction of Apple's email privacy features significantly impacts traditional email marketing metrics and strategies. The most immediate effect is on open rate tracking, as Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), often used in conjunction with these features, pre-fetches email content, making it appear as if every email is opened, regardless of whether the user actually viewed it. This masks true engagement and renders traditional open rates unreliable.

Beyond open rates, these masked email addresses introduce complexities in subscriber management and customer support. Identifying a user who has signed up with an anonymous address can be challenging if they contact support using their primary email. This can lead to fragmented customer profiles and difficulty in providing personalized experiences, requiring companies to adapt their email deliverability strategies.

For deliverability, treating these addresses as disposable (or temporary) can lead to critical issues. Unlike traditional disposable email services, Apple's relay addresses are often intended for long-term use. If your email service provider or internal systems automatically blocklist (or blacklist) domains like privaterelay.appleid.com, you risk preventing legitimate subscribers from receiving your communications. This can directly affect your sender reputation and overall inbox placement, potentially leading to more emails going to the spam folder.

Aspect	Traditional email	Apple Private Relay/Hide My Email
Subscriber Visibility	Directly reveals the user's personal email address.	Masks the user's real email with a unique alias (e.g., @privaterelay.appleid.com).
Open Tracking	Reliable indicator of whether an email was opened (without MPP).	Unreliable due to Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetching email content.
User Control	User's email is consistent unless they manually change it with the sender.	Users can disable or delete the alias at any time, ceasing mail forwarding.
Deliverability Implications	Standard deliverability practices apply based on sender reputation.	Requires proper handling to avoid being mistaken for disposable addresses, impacting inbox placement.

Strategies for successful email marketing

The key to successfully emailing recipients using Apple's privacy features is to acknowledge that these are often long-term, legitimate subscribers who value their privacy. Therefore, treating these addresses as temporary or disposable could lead to lost engagement and revenue. Instead, focus on providing real value to your audience.

Prioritizing consent and clear communication is paramount. Ensure your opt-in processes clearly state what kind of emails users will receive and how often. For those using a relayed address, understand that they are actively choosing a privacy-focused interaction. My recommendation is that you can email users who have these addresses. Maintaining strong email authentication, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, is also essential, as it helps Apple's servers trust your sending domain, regardless of the masked recipient address.Learn more about these authentication protocols.

Shift your focus from open rates to other engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, website visits, and conversions. These metrics provide a more accurate picture of subscriber interest in a privacy-first world. Furthermore, make it easy for users to manage their subscriptions, providing clear and prominent unsubscribe links. This shows respect for user privacy and can prevent them from marking your emails as spam, which negatively impacts your sender reputation.

Navigating technical challenges and common pitfalls

One significant misconception email marketers face is that @privaterelay.appleid.com addresses are disposable, similar to temporary email services. This is not the case. These addresses are valid and function as a persistent forwarding service, which users might intend to use long-term for various subscriptions. Suppressing these addresses can lead to lost legitimate subscribers.

If you experience soft bounces or rejections for these addresses, it often indicates an underlying deliverability issue rather than the address itself being invalid. Common reasons include poor sender reputation, a lack of proper email authentication, or content that triggers spam filters. Apple's servers are sophisticated and will filter or block (or blacklist) emails that appear suspicious.Investigating why emails are going to spam can help resolve this.

Maintaining a clean email list remains paramount. Regularly remove inactive subscribers and monitor engagement to ensure your list quality. Even with privacy features, consistent bad sending practices will negatively affect your standing with Apple and other mailbox providers. You can learn more about how to navigate sending to Apple Private Relay addresses from resources like Braze's documentation. Regularly check if your domain or IP is on any email blocklist (or blacklist), as this can severely impact deliverability to Apple domains.

Example of an Apple Private Relay Email Address

abcexample123@privaterelay.appleid.com

Views from the trenches

Best practices

Actively educate support teams about Apple's email relay features to better assist customers who might forget their relayed address.

Use email authentication (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) to build trust with Apple's servers and ensure your emails are delivered.

Focus on email content value and clear calls to action to drive engagement metrics beyond simple open rates.

Common pitfalls

Automatically blocklisting Apple Private Relay addresses, leading to loss of legitimate subscribers.

Over-reliance on open rates as a primary email marketing metric for Apple Mail users.

Failing to adapt customer support processes to handle inquiries from masked Apple email addresses.

Expert tips

Ensure your systems can correctly identify and store the actual email address tied to Apple's relay for better customer management.

Consider transactional emails through Apple Private Relay as long-term customer communication channels.

Implement a robust feedback loop process to monitor and address any deliverability issues with Apple's domains promptly.

Expert view

Expert from Email Geeks says: Sign in with Apple consistently uses the privaterelay.apple.com domain, whereas Hide My Email typically utilizes icloud.com addresses.

June 28, 2022 - Email Geeks

Expert view

Expert from Email Geeks says: It is not straightforward to block Hide My Email addresses without inadvertently blocking legitimate iCloud email users, which can impact deliverability.

June 28, 2022 - Email Geeks

Adapting to the privacy-first email landscape

Apple's Private Relay and Hide My Email features are clear indicators of a broader trend towards enhanced user privacy in the digital landscape. For email marketers, this isn't a hurdle to overcome, but rather an evolution to embrace. By understanding the nuances of these services and adapting your strategies accordingly, you can continue to build strong, trusting relationships with your subscribers.

Moving forward, focus on the quality and relevance of your content, prioritize robust email authentication, and shift your measurement of success to engagement metrics beyond the open rate. These practices will not only improve your deliverability to Apple users but also strengthen your overall email marketing program in an increasingly privacy-aware world.