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How iOS 15 Is Impacting Email Opens (So Far)

Kelsey Donk
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October 26, 2021
How iOS 15 Is Impacting Email Opens (So Far)
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This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

Source: SparkPost

When iOS 15 rolled out on September 20, Email marketers started slooowly losing access to accurate open rates. 

The once-reliable stat is getting distorted by a new iOS 15 feature: proxy opens. 

Proxied opens, explained

When you email someone who uses Apple Mail on iOS 15, and has opted into Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), Apple downloads the email to a proxy server. 

That reads as an open to many ESPs, though the user may not have opened the email.

As of October 13, more than 10% of emails opened via Apple Mail for iPhone were opened via proxy. 

And Apple Mail for iPhone has cornered about 38% of the email market — so [scribbles furiously on napkin] 3% or more of email opens these days might be fake. 

What’s next?

So far, just 30% of iPhone users have updated to iOS 15, and not everyone is opting in to MPP, so impact has been subtle. 

But it’s poised to grow. Just yesterday, MPP became available to desktop Apple Mail users who upgrade to macOS Monterey.

Kelsey DonkKelsey Donk
Kelsey Donk is a writer at MarketerHire. Before joining MarketerHire full-time, Kelsey was a freelance writer and loved working with small businesses to level up their content. When she isn't writing, Kelsey can be found gardening or walking her dogs all around Minneapolis.
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How iOS 15 Is Impacting Email Opens (So Far)

February 27, 2023
October 26, 2021
Kelsey Donk

When iOS 15 dropped, email marketers wondered: Was open rate dead as an engagement metric? With help from SparkPost data, we took a look at proxied opens, by the numbers.

Table of Contents

This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

Source: SparkPost

When iOS 15 rolled out on September 20, Email marketers started slooowly losing access to accurate open rates. 

The once-reliable stat is getting distorted by a new iOS 15 feature: proxy opens. 

Proxied opens, explained

When you email someone who uses Apple Mail on iOS 15, and has opted into Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), Apple downloads the email to a proxy server. 

That reads as an open to many ESPs, though the user may not have opened the email.

As of October 13, more than 10% of emails opened via Apple Mail for iPhone were opened via proxy. 

And Apple Mail for iPhone has cornered about 38% of the email market — so [scribbles furiously on napkin] 3% or more of email opens these days might be fake. 

What’s next?

So far, just 30% of iPhone users have updated to iOS 15, and not everyone is opting in to MPP, so impact has been subtle. 

But it’s poised to grow. Just yesterday, MPP became available to desktop Apple Mail users who upgrade to macOS Monterey.

Kelsey Donk
about the author

Kelsey Donk is a writer at MarketerHire. Before joining MarketerHire full-time, Kelsey was a freelance writer and loved working with small businesses to level up their content. When she isn't writing, Kelsey can be found gardening or walking her dogs all around Minneapolis.

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