Apple's announcement of plans to introduce Email Privacy Protection (MPP) has hit the world in email marketing. Modifying the email app limits the use of tracking pixels and at the same time masks the user's IP address. In short, open tracking and location tracking for these users will be severely impacted.

Apple's changes to protect email privacy are evolutionary, not innovative.

While this announcement may shock email professionals, it's really just another step in the ongoing journey to better respect consumer privacy. By 2012, Google had already Cork Bicycle Rent zone introduced a privacy tool that would allow users to opt out of tracking. In Europe these days, the GDPR considers pixel tracking to be a form of cookie. The Court of Justice of the European Court of Justice's decision in the fourth quarter of 2019 confirmed the need for positive consent for the use of pixels.

Since then, email senders have become more aggressive when it comes to informing subscribers about the use of tracking technology. According to the DMA Marketer Email Tracker Report, 41% of senders use this language in the sign-up process and 43% include tracking text in their emails. Marketers benefit from this increased transparency. The GDPR has incorporated many established best practices into the law, and due to this "halo effect," most of the program reports clear improvements in deliverability, engagement, and revenue. U.S. senders need to expect new regulations like CCPA to give consumers more visibility into their personal data collection, give them the right to access data, or expect the same benefits as deleting data. I have.

The signal accuracy provided by pixel-based open tracking also declines over time. Marcel Becker of Verizon Media spoke at last year's Validity's Summit event and tends to overreport open rates up to three times when compared to what he knows to be true as a mailbox provider (MBP). I talked about that. Reasons include the use of techniques such as image caching, image prefetching, and automatic image enable / disable, all of which create bias.

Email marketers have already been responding for some time. As the DMA report shows, only 1/4 of senders use open rates to measure program relevance, and clicks are twice as widely used. Outgoing platforms such as Campaign Monitor and Sensorpro have already introduced the ability for senders to suppress pixel tracking on demand at the campaign level, and many individual programs now enable pixel tracking at the individual subscriber level. / We are developing a function to disable it.