Last Updated: April 26, 2022
Several months ago Apple announced a group of updates to iOS 15 called Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Movable Ink’s data analysts have been researching consumer usage of the beta version of iOS 15 as well as the Generally Available release that launched on September 20th, 2021. Between the launch and March 28th, 2022, we have analyzed over 3.6 trillion content impressions and Michael Nutt, Movable Ink’s Chief Technology Officer, just published our findings.
View the Research: Analysis of iOS 15 Content Caching
There are two key takeaways from this research:
Opens are no longer a reliable metric for Apple Mail users. It should still be possible to segment out Apple Mail users if this metric is important to your business. Email opens are just one signal and are used as a KPI, a feedback loop for mail deliverability, for journey splits, and much more. A marketer can no longer be certain if a recipient truly opened an email, what time they opened it, or what their IP address was. Apple has accomplished its goal of privacy protection.
The surprising finding is that for the majority of Apple Mail users, any caching that is occurring is far closer to real-time than had been anticipated.
Average iOS 15 Apple Mail recency analysis
• 85% of Apple Mail users see content rendered less than 2 minutes prior to open
• 5% of Apple Mail users see content 2 to 21 minutes old
• 5% of Apple Mail users see content 21 to 144 minutes old
• 5% of Apple Mail users see content over 144 minutes old
Movable Ink has always helped businesses access their zero-party and first-party data assets and activate them into personalized content at scale. This is critical because people don’t experience data, they experience content. Sophisticated marketers understand the personalization imperative. Every CMO I’ve spoken to this year has listed it as an urgent strategic initiative for their organization. We believe that all marketers should easily be able to deliver millions of unique, relevant experiences to the millions of people on their lists – across the channels their customers choose to engage in.
Against that backdrop, this research should be welcome news to marketers who have use cases that rely on fast-changing data to inform personalized experiences. I invite you to review it in full. The future of personalization is bright and we are committed to helping you capture the opportunities ahead to drive your business forward.