How Does Apple’s Privacy SettingsAffect Measurement?

Five Lessons from Starting a Newsletter

When launching and producing a newsletter, here are forms of measurement to study and track, especially in the current digital landscape shaped by privacy updates like Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and Link Tracking Protection (LTP).

Who needs this information?

• Anyone involved in writing and publsihing a newsletter (Understand the measurement fundamentals, make data-based decisions, keep track of new developments that change what you can measure)

• Anyone who supervises someone or a team that publsihes a newsletter (Ask better questions, understand the metrics shown to you)

• Anyone considering starting a newsletter

• Readers of newsletters to know the efforts to return some privacy

What is Apple’s MPP?

Recent privacy updates, especially Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), have made it more difficult to accurately measure open rates. This privacy feature automatically loads all email images, including tracking pixels used to measure opens, regardless of whether the user actually opens the email. As a result, email marketing tools may report higher or less accurate open rates because they can't distinguish between emails that were truly opened by recipients and those that were automatically preloaded by the privacy feature. This change has led marketers and communicators to adjust how they measure engagement.

Here are the top five measurement lessons to consider, which focus on metrics beyond open rates due to the implications of MPP:

1. Click-Through Rate (CTR):   

• Description: CTR measures the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in an email. This metric is essential for understanding the actual engagement with the content.

• Importance Post-MPP: Since MPP obscures open rates by preloading images (including tracking pixels), CTR becomes a more reliable gauge of engagement.

  • But there is another Apple privacy tool to understand: Apple's Link Tracking Protection (LTP) is a privacy feature that aims to prevent marketers and websites from tracking users' online activities through clicked links in emails. It works by stripping tracking parameters from URLs when links in emails are clicked, thereby shielding users' browsing behavior from being monitored and associated with their email identities. This feature enhances user privacy but can impact marketers' ability to gather detailed engagement data from their email campaigns.

  • Modern Marketing Blog has a good article on this topic that says, for now, marketers are not affected: Apple's Link Tracking Protection: The Impact on Email & Other Channels

• Industry Standards: A good industry standard CTR varies by sector but typically ranges from 1% to 5%.

 2. Growth Rate of Subscribers:

• Description: This measures the net increase in subscribers over a period, considering both new sign-ups and unsubscribes.

• Importance Post-MPP: Monitoring subscriber growth helps gauge the overall appeal and reach of your newsletter content, independent of open rate accuracy.

• Industry Standards:

  • New Subscribers: Healthy growth rates depend on the industry and audience size but aiming for a 1-3% monthly growth is a common benchmark. For many new newsletters, an initial target could be anywhere from 10 to 100 new subscribers per month. However, for a business with more resources and a broad potential audience, setting a target of several hundred to a thousand new subscribers per month might be reasonable.

  • Unsubscribes: The unsubscribe rate in email marketing measures the percentage of recipients who choose to opt-out from your mailing list after receiving an email. This rate is calculated by dividing the number of unsubscribes by the total number of emails delivered (excluding those that bounced) and then multiplying by 100 to convert it into a percentage. Ideally, this should be less than 1%.

3. Bounce Rate:

• Description: Bounce rate tracks the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

• Importance Post-MPP: Maintaining a low bounce rate is crucial for email deliverability and sender reputation, which are pivotal in ensuring your emails reach the inbox.

• Industry Standards: A bounce rate below 2% is generally considered acceptable.

4. Engagement Over Time:

• Description: This metric looks at how subscriber engagement (e.g., CTR, conversion rates) changes over time.

• Importance Post-MPP: Analyzing long-term trends in engagement can provide deeper insights into the lasting impact of your content and reveal shifts in audience behavior.

• Industry Standards: While specific benchmarks can vary, a decline in engagement may signal the need for content refreshment or strategy pivots.

5. Conversion Rate:

• Description: This metric tracks the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link and completed a desired action, such as filling out a form or purchasing a product.

• Importance Post-MPP: Conversion rates help measure the effectiveness of email content and CTAs in driving measurable actions, making them crucial in the context of privacy-first analytics.

• Industry Standards: Conversion rates can vary widely, but a rate of 2-5% is typically considered effective across industries.

By focusing on these metrics, you can build a clear framework for measuring the success of your newsletter, tailored to an era where traditional open rates no longer provide the full picture.