Both Gmail and Apple Mail Privacy Protection offer privacy protection to their email users which can prevent:
Logging of who has opened the email, and when. For Apple Mail Privacy protection the email is automatically opened on receipt, by Apple
Getting a person’s IP address, for location information and/or matching to previous data.
Getting data for the device type the person is using.
Gmail and Apple make up the main market share ( 86% in Nov 2023 ) for mailbox providers, and uptake of the privacy options is high and continues to increase. Therefore, marketers should be aware of the impact and plan email content accordingly.
Things to consider
Is Proxy vs Has Apple Mail Privacy Protection Enabled rules
As Gmail and Apple work in slightly different ways, in the system there are two email Slot rules to detect the state of the email content request, which can be used to adjust what you’re showing:
Is Proxy
Detects if the email provider is opening the email through a proxy. This could be either Gmail Proxy or Apple Mail Privacy Protection and means that there is no source IP address or device information.
Has Apple Mail Privacy Protection Enabled
Detects if Apple Mail Privacy Protection is enabled, which means, in addition to there being no IP or device information, the email is also being opened upon receipt.
Therefore, if Apple Mail Privacy Protection is true, then Is Proxy must also always be true. But the Is Proxy rule includes Gmail Proxy, which the Apple Mail Privacy Protection rule doesn’t.
These rules can be used to adjust the content being served to an account for these privacy protection settings.
Open-Time vs Send-Time content
It can be useful to customize content based on when the user opens the email, rather than when it was sent. For example a recommendation block may be set to filter out products that have gone out of stock, which could change between send time and open time.
When Apple Mail Privacy Protection is in use, emails are opened by Apple as soon as they arrive, which results in the content being fetched from the system. So when the actual person opens the email later, the content is shown based on when it was opened by Apple on receipt.
The action to take here depends on what you are trying to achieve, but when designing open-time content for emails, you should either make sure there is a sensible fallback , for example, accept that out of stock products might appear for recommendations, or add a rule to show alternative content if this delay might result in inappropriate content.
This rule can be found under Person > Current Device on the Slot Add Rules tab.
Countdowns
Countdown timers in email work on a 60 second frame gif, so only the first minute of the timer is valid for open time content. Apple Mail opens the email as soon as it lands in the inbox, therefore activating the countdown timer at this point, which means the countdown is likely to be incorrect when the person opens it later.
We therefore do not recommend showing a countdown timer in emails when Apple Mail Privacy Protection is in use. In these scenarios, use a marketing rule to show alternative content to users with privacy protection enabled.
Mobile vs desktop optimized SmartBlocks
We know adjusting content based on the device a person is using can improve usability, but when the privacy settings are on, the device data is not shared.
Therefore, it’s best to create content that works effectively on all emails, regardless of device type.
If you still want to customize your content in this way, add a Current Device > Is proxy = false rule before your device type rule. This filters out those that we can detect the device type for and allows you to set an appropriate fallback SmartBlock for those that we can’t.
Location-based content and geotargeting
Location-based content based on IP address is not advised due to the generally unreliable nature of IP address-based locations. However, it’s even less reliable in emails if privacy settings are enabled, as the IP address logged is unlikely to belong to the actual recipient.
Location based content can still be achieved from data that is stored about a person, either through location capture during previous web browsing sessions or from more reliable imported person data, such as a delivery address.
Learn more in Import person data.
To use the data already held, you need to include a person’s ID in the email Slot request so the system can look up their stored location and match any configured rules or content. You also need to set the appropriate priority of location information that should be used.
Learn more in Use geotargeting.
Running optimizations
Our automatic optimizations (Auto Optimize and Contextual Auto Optimize) change the content being shown based on the data coming in to the system, therefore it is key to throttle your email sends to achieve an effective outcome.
For example, if you send all the emails at once, email slots received by Apple Mail decide which content to show as soon as the email is received, for all emails, so there’s no time for the system to adjust the content being shown based on outcome. By sending emails in stages, the system can optimize towards the higher achieving content items in the later sends.
Other email Slot rules
The following email Slot rules may be impacted by the lack of data and should be used with consideration:
Time based rules - these are executed based on open time, which may be when the email is received for Apple Mail Privacy Protection users.
Weather based rules - these are location based, so the location based content above is relevant. Depending on the delay between receipt and reading, the weather may become inaccurate.
Apple link tracking protection
Apple’s June 5, 2023 press release contained the following announcement:
"Some websites add extra information to their URLs in order to track users across other websites. Now this information will be removed from the links users share in Messages and Mail, and the links will still work as expected. This information will also be removed from links in Safari Private Browsing."
This new link tracking protection only affects some specific tracking parameters used and does not affect the tracking codes used by the system. The tracking parameters which are affected at time of writing are:
gclid
- Google AdWords / Analyticsdclid
- Google Display Networkfbclid
- Facebook advertisingtwclkd
- Twitter (X) advertisingmc_eid
- MailChimpigshid
- Instagram
Apple Mail Privacy Protection - caching
For contacts using Apple Mail privacy protection, images within email SmartBlocks are cached for a long period, which can result in a mismatch between a product image shown in an email, and the product that the contact is redirected to when they click through.
We have a system setting that can help mitigate the effect of this caching issue. It allows you to set the time period that the platform retains the original feed for email SmartBlocks when usage of Apple Mail is detected. By default, this setting is not enabled.
To enable it:
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > System Configuration.
Select Content Settings.
In the Apple Mail proxy cache time field, enter the number of days you want to cache products for.
Select SAVE.
Further Information
Additional information can be found:
In our webinar.
In the Making Slots responsive for mobile devices article.