iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 – What Does It Mean For Your Winery?

Apple's newest iOS 15 release brings with it some great new features, redesigns and, most notable, enhanced privacy features. The way email marketers have leveraged open rates for measuring campaign success may change with Apple's iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8 and its enhanced privacy features. This update is great for customer privacy, however, it will likely impact the metrics you use to gauge your marketing success.

One of the many key metrics marketers use to measure email marketing success is open rate. A high open rate may indicate interest in your content from your recipient and a low open rate may signal you’ve missed the mark, your lists aren’t properly segmented or cleaned, or you’re not cutting through the noise with optimized send days and times. With these new changes, Apple Mail will allow users to opt in to mail privacy features that mask IP addresses and block third parties from tracking email opens or other IP data.

Apple stated, "In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent 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." Essentially, Apple will be 'opening' emails via a pixel on behalf of their users. That means these pixels will be loaded much more often, regardless of whether the recipient actually opens the email. As a result, email open metrics will likely be inflated significantly for future sends, and any other processes that rely on open tracking may be compromised, too.

Here are a few things to consider as you prepare for iOS 15:

• Remember, this change won't impact all email readers. This update only applies to Apple Mail users, not all email users.

• Consider adjusting open-rate goals. You may want to start by finding out what % of your target audience are using Apple Mail.
• Leverage other email marketing data. Open rates are still a good benchmark, but you should consider click rates, or reply rates too.

This week, WineDirect gave the all-clear to update your iPhones to iOS 15 and iPads to iPadOS 15 for the WineDirect Point of Sale app. We are continually updating our current platform and apps to have them compatible with the latest and greatest technology. Thank you for your continued partnership with us as you grow your DTC channels.