How accurate is email client market share data when Apple Mail intentionally opens messages?

Key findings

• Distorted data: Traditional image-pixel-based email open rate tracking is heavily distorted by Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP).
• Machine opens: Apple's MPP pre-fetches and opens all images, irrespective of user action, leading to machine opens.
• Proxy masking: MPP also conceals user IP addresses, complicating the identification of the actual email client or user engagement.
• Metric impact: This significantly undermines the reliability of both email client market share data and perceived open rates.
• Broader effect: Other mailbox providers, such as Gmail, also employ similar image caching and proxying, further complicating accurate open tracking.

Key considerations

• Engagement refocus: Marketers should shift their focus from open rates to alternative metrics like clicks, conversions, and replies for assessing true engagement. Here's how to estimate real open rates.
• First-party data: Prioritize gathering direct user interactions and preferences.
• Tool adaptation: Email service providers and analytics platforms must adjust their reporting to account for MPP's effects.
• Deliverability: While opens don't directly influence deliverability, understanding genuine engagement is crucial for maintaining sender reputation.
• Privacy compliance: Marketers should ensure their tracking practices align with evolving privacy standards. For more, see Salesforce Ben's article on the death of the open rate.

Key opinions

• Skepticism: Many marketers view reported email client market share figures, especially those showing Apple Mail's high percentages, with skepticism.
• Targeting impact: The inability to precisely identify a subscriber's email client hinders effective segmentation and personalized content strategies.
• Need for clarity: There's a strong demand for clearer explanations on how these privacy changes affect tracking and what constitutes a real open.
• Adaptation struggles: Marketers are grappling with how to adjust their email campaigns and reporting to accommodate these new privacy measures.

Key considerations

• Clicks over opens: Shifting primary success metrics to clicks and conversions provides more reliable insights into engagement.
• Redefine engagement: Developing new ways to measure user engagement beyond simple open tracking, where possible, is important. Learn about measuring engagement despite bot clicks.
• Platform improvements: Marketers are calling for email service providers to implement better ways to distinguish between real and machine-generated opens. Consider how HubSpot handles MPP.
• A/B testing: Continued A/B testing on content and calls-to-action remains crucial for identifying what truly resonates, irrespective of open data inaccuracies. For more, see how Gmail image caching affects opens.

Key opinions

• Data skepticism: Experts strongly advise treating reported email client market share figures, particularly those based on image downloads, with skepticism, as they do not reflect genuine user engagement.
• Machine vs. user: Many recorded "opens" are automated actions by machines or proxies, not active user interaction with email content.
• Proxy obscuration: Proxy services, such as those from Apple or Yahoo, conceal the actual application used by the subscriber, making it impossible to ascertain the true client or if the email was actually read.
• Client-side filters: While some desktop email clients (e.g., Apple Mail for MacOS) offer additional client-side spam filters, these are typically user-enabled and operate independently of server-side filtering.

Key considerations

• Shifted focus: Email performance measurement should shift to metrics beyond opens, such as clicks, conversions, and replies. This helps with IP warmup strategy and open rate tracking.
• Proxy understanding: It's essential to acknowledge that proxy services will generate "opens"regardless of actual user interaction.
• Educate marketers: Provide guidance to marketers on the limitations of traditional open rate metrics in the privacy-enhanced era. Litmus's data (often cited by EmailTooltester.com) illustrates the scale of this impact.
• New standards: Advocate for the industry-wide adoption of new, more precise methods for gauging email engagement and client share. Understanding the email client share is still important.

Key findings

• MPP functionality: Documentation confirms that MPP pre-loads email content, including any tracking pixels, through proxy servers to safeguard user data.
• IP masking: A core feature of MPP is the concealment of user IP addresses, which prevents senders from obtaining direct location or client information.
• Artificial opens: This pre-loading process generates "artificial" opens, resulting in inflated and inaccurate open rates that do not represent genuine engagement. Learn more about how MPP affects tracking.
• Data focus shift: Industry recommendations increasingly point towards a greater reliance on first-party data, such as clicks and conversions, over traditional open metrics.

Key considerations

• Metric adjustments: Marketers and analysts must revise their approaches for evaluating email campaign performance to account for MPP's impact.
• Privacy-first: Adopting a privacy-first approach in email marketing strategy and data analysis is crucial.
• Platform evolution: Email platforms need to enhance their reporting capabilities to offer clearer insights into MPP-affected opens. This relates to accurately measuring open rates.
• Intent signals: Focus on signals that explicitly indicate user intent, such as clicks on links within the email, as a more reliable measure of engagement. MarTech emphasizes future-proofing email marketing by focusing on first-party data.