Hi,

When tropical storms are on the horizon, residents of potentially affected areas know how to prepare to minimize damages. Apple’s privacy announcement for iOS 15 which is expected in September is not that different from a tropical storm. But you, the potentially affected resident, can not only minimize damages but also come out much stronger from it.

|| If you want to learn more about the announcement check out our blog or on-demand webinar on the subject.

Yes, iOS 15 will impact email reporting, change segmentation practices, and potentially cause tons of broken journeys, but you have Optimove, a marketing solution built on principles far more powerful than simple email opens. So, you have an edge your competitors don’t.

This magazine will give you the rundown of what we know about iOS 15 and everything you need to know about how to prepare to overcome it. And if you want more depth, this FAQ article should help (it is updated as new questions come in, so make sure to bookmark it).

Cheers,

Shai Frank, VP of Product

Measurement – Email opens and bounces will go up, and not in a good way

In a user survey we ran last July, 48% of respondents said channel metrics (such as email opens and deliverability) were part of their performance evaluation. This just got a lot harder to do.

Apple’s upcoming release will inflate open rates, as emails will be reported as opened upon reception, irrespective of whether that actually happened.

But don’t panic just yet. This is an opportunity. We suggest you ramp up your use of control groups and focus on business KPIs instead of channel metrics. Control groups will help you learn the true impact of your emails by comparing the behavior of customers who receive your email to those who didn’t, regardless of whether they opened and/or clicked.

The new release might also cause a jump in hard bounces as a result of the “hide my email” premium functionality. Hide my email will create a “burner email address” that forwards emails to the owner’s true address. However, once deactivated it does not unsubscribe, but rather results in a hard bounce.

In case you’d like to suppress bounced emails from future sends, you can create special criteria by speaking with your CSM.

Segmentation – Deliverability and engagement best practices, revisited

iOS 15 will also impact segmentation best practices. Specifically, the use of “opened email” as a target group condition. Since reporting on email opens will deteriorate, the use of that metric as a key to identifying engaged users for improved results and deliverability is no longer an option.

This blog covers many tips on how to tackle the deliverability question in a post-iOS 15 world, while for engaged target groups here are some recommendations:

Leverage Optimove’s various other engagement attributes -Activity History, Purchase History, Web & App Activity, and email clicks to identify engaged customers.
Add additional customer attributes (real-time and batch) that can help you identify engagement such as “Days since the last transaction” or the “Today” criteria.

Orchestration – Replacing dependency on opens to avoid Broken Journeys

The use of journey splits based on email open activity has been a long staple of marketers using the Visual Stream Builder (VSB). However, with reporting on email opens becoming unreliable, customers might find themselves in the wrong bracket of your Stream.

As you know we are proponents of not mapping journeys manually using the VSB, but rather of using our prioritization and exclusion mechanisms to orchestrate your personalized customer journeys. If you used to rely on email open splits, then here are some recommendations moving forward:

Let Optimove’s Self-Optimizing Journeys drive each customer to her most impactful journey instead of manually deciding splits in Streams.
If using the VSB, leverage the split by trigger or attribute capabilities to ensure customers reach your desired destination.
If you still want to use the split-by-response capability, then rely on the change in the KPI you set for the Stream or on link clicks instead of email opens.

Engagement – Updating within-email personalization

The final area of impact of iOS 15 is the impact on personalization that takes place once an email is opened. For example, when using Optimove’s DynamicMail to populate the store nearest to your customer when she opens the email.

Although this geolocation or IP-based localization will be more limited moving forward, there is still a lot you can do to enhance email engagement and personalization:

Optimail customers can leverage all customer data in personalization tags and conditional clauses to create hyper-personalized email content that drives engagement.
DynamicMail clients can leverage a myriad of dynamic content capabilities including carousels, coupon reveals, personalized images, and many more to delight customers with both engaging and personalized content.

> From our Blog

Overcoming iOS 15

Our own email deliverability expert tells you everything you need to know to overcome in this blog.

Measuring Email Impact in the Shadow of iOS15

Listen in on this webinar to hear the pressing questions marketers have about the update, as well as some steps you can take today, to prepare for iOS 15.

iOS 15 FAQ

Get answers to the burning questions on the impact of Apple’s upcoming privacy changes in this FAQ article. We will update the article constantly so make sure to bookmark it!