How does the new IOS 15 affect your HubSpot campaigns?

As you most certainly know, last June Apple announced the new features of iOS 15, amongst them it's the privacy policy. In this new policy we can find Email Privacy Protection, which is very important as it may affect your email marketing strategies and results...

But don't worry! In this post we'll show you the key elements to keep in mind from now on if you don't want the new iOS 15 to affect your email marketing results on HubSpot.

Which changes are implemented in the iOS 15?

Apple's new mobile operating system (iOS 15) was launched on September 20, and will be rolled out to all devices in the upcoming months. This new system includes several changes related to privacy:

• Email Privacy Protection (free option): prevents senders from being able to see if and when the recipient opens an email in Apple Mail. In addition, it hides their IP address, so the recipients' location cannot be determined.
  
  
• iCloud+ (paid option): iCloud subscription with these additional privacy features allows Safari users to hide their browsing history. In addition, they will be able to see which websites they are sending information to.
  
  
• Hide My Email (within iCloud+): this feature hides the user's email address. With it, Apple customers can give websites a "fake" email address, in order to not share personal information with a company.

These changes affect all email service providers that send emails to Apple Mail users.

Paid features may not have a big impact on your email marketing efforts, as it is necessary for users to pay for these services. However, the free Email Privacy Protection option has caused quite a stir within the marketing community.

At the moment, Apple has not explicitly announced whether Email Privacy Protection will be an optional or automatic feature. However, some iOS 15 users have shared images in which we can see that the Mail app gives them a choice between one of the two options:

How iOS 15 can affect your Email Marketing?

The iOS 14.5 update limited app tracking by requiring users to choose whether they want to share information when they open an app after downloading it. In addition, Google is working on its Privacy Sandbox, as it prepares advertisers and marketers for the removal of third-party cookies from Chrome in 2022.

Some marketers (mbudo team included) aren't surprised about these changes and believe that this will have a positive impact regarding the user experience. This means that all companies, regardless of their size, will have to work more and harder to build trust with their audience, thus gaining the right to know who they are and what they are interested in.

Focusing on how iOS 15 can affect your email marketing strategy, we find the following::

• Inflated email open rates: due to Apple opening emails on behalf of users who sign up via tracking pixels on their behalf.
  
  
• Inflated data sets: this is because a person's activity may be spread across multiple contact records. The "Hide My Email" option allows users to operate with fake and random email addresses, thus running the risk of one person's activity being read.
  
  
• Less effective IP-dependent tactics: not being able to know a contact's IP address means you won't be able to schedule your emails at a relevant time.
  
  
• HubSpot features based on email open tracking:

• • API integrations
  • Workflows
  • Reports
  • Lists

How can you solve it?

1. Keep being up to date with all the latest Apple news

Although iOS 15 features are starting to be implemented, there is still a lot to learn about this new system and how it can impact our daily marketing tasks..

HubSpot is analyzing this change, and will implement solutions in case the impact on the open rate is very large.

2. Remember: this change will not affect all your email recipients.

Although Apple Mail and Apple's mobile devices account for more than 35% of the market share of email providers worldwide, Google, Outlook and other providers have not announced similar privacy policies. This means that open and IP data could still provide relevant tracking information.

3. Consider adjusting your open rate goals.

It's possible that a large portion of your audience will no longer be trackable, so you may need to modify your open rate goals, determining which new open rates qualify as low, medium and high.

We recommend that you establish how many opens you normally get from iOS users, to estimate how they might change after this launch.

In addition, we encourage you to track your email open rates for a month or two after the iOS 15 rollout to see how the data evolves.

4. Take into account all the statistics of your emails.

While open rate is a key KPI in many companies, it is not the only data you can use to determine if your email content is successful with your customers.

If you don't already, you should start analyzing other email statistics:

• Click-through and click-through rates.
• Traffic to your website.
• Clickmaps.
• Unsubscription rates

If you want to know more about each statistic, and what are the ideal values, take a look at this post.

In addition, so that you don't miss anything, we have prepared this list of HubSpot features that will be affected, and that you should be aware of:

List of HubSpot features affected by iOS 15

Properties

These properties may be affected::

• Last marketing email open date
• Nº of Marketing emails opened 
• Date first marketing email opened 
• Sends since last engagement
• Date last sales email opened
• Last engagement date
• Any scoring properties or calculated properties

Workflows

You will need to check:

• Triggers (including "marketing email" triggers).
• Delays
• Targets
• Suppression lists
• Branches

Reports

• Review your custom reports that refers to the metrics and properties listed above.
• Review email reports. Track changes and consider using click-through and response data to make decisions.

Lists

Check your lists for criteria that refer to open metrics and properties.

As you can see, you will be able to prevent Apple's new iOS 15 from affecting your email marketing campaigns if you follow a few key points. In addition, it's essential that you keep yourself continuously updated of any changes that may arise regarding this topic or any other in the industry.

Remember that at mbudo we have extensive experience implementing email marketing strategies. Do not hesitate to contact us, we will be glad to help you!