You’ve carefully crafted the perfect email for your customers. You wrote a great subject line, picked a beautiful image, and hit send. Now, you wait and watch your open rates climb. But lately, you might have noticed something strange. Your open rates seem higher than ever, yet your clicks and sales haven’t changed. What’s going on? The answer might be Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection.

Let’s break down what this is and how it affects your small business.

What Is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?

In 2021, Apple introduced a new feature for its Mail app on iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers called Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). This feature gives users more control over their data.

When a user with MPP enabled receives an email, Apple’s servers download all the images in that email. This happens in the background, whether the person actually opens the email or not.

Why does this matter? Email marketing software traditionally uses a tiny, invisible image called a tracking pixel to see if an email has been opened. When you open an email, that pixel loads and sends a signal back saying, “This email was opened!” With Apple’s MPP, the pixel gets loaded by Apple’s server, not the user’s. This makes it look like every email sent to an Apple Mail user has been opened, even if it was instantly deleted or is sitting unread in their inbox.

The Real Impact on Your Open Rates

The biggest change you’ll see is that your email open rates might look artificially high. You could see open rates of 80%, 90%, or even higher for a segment of your audience. While this looks great on a report, it’s not a true measure of engagement.

Think of it like this. Imagine you own a small coffee shop. You give out 100 free coffee flyers. In the past, you could count how many people came in with the flyer. Now, imagine someone collects all 100 flyers for you, whether people wanted them or not, and tells you every single one was seen. That’s what MPP does to your open rate metric. It makes it unreliable.

Relying on these inflated open rates can lead you to make poor decisions. You might think a certain email campaign was a huge success when, in reality, it didn’t connect with your audience at all.

What Should You Do Now? Actionable Steps for Your Business

Don’t worry, email marketing is far from dead. It just means we need to adapt. Here are some practical steps you can take to keep your email strategy effective.

1. Shift Your Focus from Opens to Clicks
Since open rates are no longer dependable, you need to focus on metrics that show true interest. The most important one is the click-through rate. A click shows that someone not only opened your email but also engaged with your content enough to take the next step.
Start tracking clicks on your links, whether they lead to a product page, a blog post, or your contact form. This is now your best indicator of how well your email content is performing.

2. Pay Attention to Other Engagement Signals
Beyond clicks, look at other actions your subscribers take after receiving an email.

• • • Website Visits: Did you see a spike in traffic to your website shortly after sending your email?
    • Sales and Conversions: Can you attribute any sales directly to your email campaign? Use discount codes specific to your emails to track this.
    • Replies: A customer replying to your email is a powerful sign of engagement.

3. Clean Your Email List Strategically
In the past, you might have removed subscribers who hadn’t opened your emails in a while. Now, that’s not a reliable way to clean your list. Instead, look for subscribers who haven’t clicked on anything in six months or a year. These are the truly inactive contacts you might consider removing.

4. A/B Test Your Content, Not Just Subject Lines
While a great subject line is still important for getting noticed in a crowded inbox, you can’t rely on open rates to test which one works best. Instead, run A/B tests on the content inside your email. Try sending two versions of an email to different parts of your list. One version could have a big “Shop Now” button, while the other has a link to a helpful article. See which version gets more clicks. This tells you what your audience truly wants to see from you.

Looking Ahead

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection has changed the game, but it hasn’t ended it. By focusing on more meaningful metrics like clicks and conversions, you can get a much clearer picture of what’s working. This shift encourages us to create better, more valuable content that people genuinely want to interact with.

At MoDuet, we believe these changes create an opportunity for small businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers. It’s about moving beyond a simple open and focusing on real connection.