Si eres un #emailgeek, sin duda has oído las noticias de Apple esta semana sobre un gran cambio que tendrá un impacto en el correo electrónico cuando se trata de seguimiento de aperturas. Queríamos compartir lo que sabemos y nuestros puntos de vista a partir de ahora, pero esta información evolucionará a medida que sepamos más. Seguiremos actualizando este post y compartiendo nuevos contenidos en las próximas semanas y meses a medida que sepamos más.

¿Qué ocurre?

Apple announced Mail Privacidad Protection for their Mail app on iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey devices. Según Apple, “Mail Privacidad Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. [It prevents] senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.”

¿Cuándo?

Aunque no se ha fijado una fecha, se espera que se lance ya en septiembre, pero posiblemente hasta noviembre.

How will users control their Mail Privacidad Protection via their iOS 15 Mail app? 

A continuación se muestra cómo se presentará la función de protección de la privacidad a todos los usuarios de iOS 15:

Image source: Ryan Jones on Twitter.

What are the resulting implications when “Protect Mail Activity” is selected by a user? 

Nuestras pruebas han confirmado que, en algunos casos, Apple está precargando imágenes en un correo electrónico, incluso en correos que no se han abierto. Esto significa que casi todos los correos electrónicos enviados a destinatarios a través de la aplicación Mail pueden tener resultados ofuscados que muestren falsas aperturas.

Does it matter if the user is on Gmail or some other mail service? 

El servicio de correo no importa aquí. Lo importante es el punto final en el que se abre el correo electrónico. Si un correo electrónico se abre en la aplicación Mail en dispositivos iOS 15, iPadOS 15 y macOS Monterey, tendrá la opción de no ser rastreado a través de la selección de privacidad del usuario que se muestra en la captura de pantalla anterior.

¿Qué ocurre si el usuario tiene iOS 15 y utiliza la aplicación de Gmail?

No es el sistema operativo el único que permite este seguimiento. Es sólo cuando el usuario tiene iOS 15 Y revisa su correo a través de la app nativa Apple Mail. Si el usuario está en Gmail u otra app de correo que no sea Apple Mail, aunque tenga iOS 15, los controles de privacidad no estarán en vigor.

Como remitente de correo electrónico, ¿significa esto que no podré realizar un seguimiento de las aperturas para los usuarios de Apple Mail?

Creemos que muchos usuarios optarán por seleccionar la opción "Proteger actividad de correo" cuando se les presente. Creemos que los informes sobredimensionarán el número de aperturas, dado que Apple parece estar cargando los píxeles de seguimiento a través de un relé o proxy para los usuarios que han optado por la privacidad. Las pruebas que hemos realizado han confirmado que, en algunos casos, Apple carga previamente imágenes en un mensaje de correo electrónico, incluso en mensajes que no se han abierto*.

¿Y los clics? ¿Se verá afectado el seguimiento de los mismos?

In our testing, we’ve determined that when “iCloud Private Relay” (which will be a part of the new iCloud+ offering) is enabled all web browsing activities through Safari are encrypted and routed through varios servidores proxy.  One interesting point to note is that Private Relay (at, least on our test device) worked just as well over HTTP or HTTPS.  This behavior is different than some sites are reporting, but in multiple tests our actual IP address was masked over both HTTP and HTTPS sites.

Additionally, early testing indicates that Apple will not modify the querystring nor are they changing the user agent string. So, first-party click tracking will likely not be impacted by this feature.  

When configuring Private Relay, the user is presented with two options for protecting their location information. En user can choose to have an anonymous IP address that preserves the user’s approximate location or they can choose to have an IP address that will be located in a broader region.  In our testing, the IP address when choosing the first option was located in the metropolitan area that the test lived within, but not identifiable to their home neighborhood.  When choosing the broader region option, the IP address was in an entirely different state, but still in the same country.  Assuming this behavior remains the same in the future, sites will still be able to use the IP information to make privacy compliance, segmentations, and similar geographic/regional decisions. 

How many people use Apple’s Mail App? 

As the world’s largest email sender delivering 40% of the world’s commercial and transactional email, we have a fairly good view of the world’s email footprint. In our Informe de referencia 2021, we saw 38.1% of all opens and clicks coming from one of the Apple Mail app clients, with 25.7% on iPhone, 9.6% on desktop and 2.8% on iPad. This is second only to Gmail (on mobile and desktop) as the largest market share of any device/client family.

¿Por qué hace esto Apple?

Apple has long held the belief that privacy is a fundamental human right. It matches what a lot of governments in industrial nations across the world have been leaning into. This is something they are able to do as the owner of the distribution channel, and it’s a trend we’ve seen Apple follow with capping the IDFA tracking on other apps on the App Store, which ha llegado con una lucha de Facebook. Apple initiated these types of changes in email last year when they launched the Private Email Relay service which allows users to sign into apps with an anonymous, unique email address. With the release of iOS 14.5, when US-based users were prompted to authorize tracking by an app, 96% of the time they opted out of tracking, so we believe adoption of this new privacy feature will be extremely broad.  We’ve also seen the demise of cookies de terceros in the advertising industry, including on Apple’s Safari. It was inevitable that Apple would lean into privacy on open tracking too. 

How much will this impact email senders? 

Opens are not a perfect metric, and it has always come with flaws. It does, however, tell you engagement trends over time. Some call it a vanity metric, which is a myopic view. En technology behind opens powers more than an engagement metric (even if that metric is flawed). It also makes a lot of the cool innovation in the email space possible, which is now up to question. 

Hay mucho que desentrañar, pero esto es lo que creemos que repercutirá:

• Falta de capacidad para utilizar las aperturas como parte de una estrategia de higiene/segmentación de listas. Without access to opens, senders will need to rely on clicks and deeper behaviors to know if a real human is still there and interested in the content to keep receiving it. Opens (and the lack-thereof) have long been an important leading indicator of user disengagement which promoted early removal/retargeting of disengaged users. Some senders might even fall into bad sending practices by not having this metric to use for segmentation. We suspect Q4 (and beyond) deliverability might be challenging for some senders that aren’t ready for this.

• Las pruebas de líneas de asunto que se basan en el seguimiento de aperturas serán erróneas. This will no longer be an easy thing to test for Apple Mail users. Metrics like clicks and conversions that are further down the email conversion funnel from the subject line will have to be used. Companies that use Natural Language Processing to optimize subject lines will need to rethink their strategy in order to update the algorithms that support the effectiveness of their products when it comes to recipients using the Mail App. However, subject line testing that relies upon data from panel engagement, such as SparkPost subject line predict and subject line advisor, will continue to provide relevant insights and predictions.

• La optimización del tiempo de envío también será defectuosa because it often takes opens into account as part of its algorithm to determine the right time to send the email based on open and click engagement. We do believe that products like Verizon’s View Time Optimization will be unaffected by this.

• Se romperá la personalización en tiempo abierto/contenido en vivo. We’ve seen cool innovation in recent years with weather widgets and store locators based on your location en el time of open. Other innovations that will be impacted will be device trackers that detect the operating system to tell you to download the app via the App Store or Google Play. Countdown timers will probably not work due a la caching by Apple at mail inception. Anything that draws from context en el time of open (location, time, device, etc) through open tracking is potentially at risk.

• Habrá que replantearse las estrategias de datos para las leyes de privacidad específicas de cada país (como el GDPR) o la disponibilidad de servicios. if they use email opens or clicks from emails to establish recipient residency.

• Supervisar la colocación de inbox se convertirá en un parámetro aún más importante. because assuming your emails have landed in the inbox based on opens will no longer be reliable.

¿Cómo afectará a los productos que utilizo en Bird?

We’re ready for this big industry change in our products. You can read more about it here.

Estas son nuestras primeras impresiones sobre lo que esto significa para la comunidad del correo electrónico. Seguiremos informando y compartiendo contenidos sobre cómo prepararse para este cambio que llegará antes de que nos demos cuenta.