In 2022, the email marketing landscape is changing dramatically. With new privacy regulations and a general shift toward digital content, it’s not just about who opens your emails anymore—it’s about what they do after they open them.
A quick overview of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
We covered this last year, which you can read here. But here are some quick points about the major change:
- Any Apple user using the mail app with Privacy Protection enabled will have their emails ‘opened’ on an Apple server, making them appear as opened in ESP reporting
- This is a user action and not a default setting, yet.
- It will skew location/geodata for when users actually open the email
- Live content such as timers won’t work properly
Since taking effect Litmus has revealed that 53% of Apple Mail has been impacted by MPP.
So if not open rate, then what?
The truth is, you still need to consider open rate as a good metric, because after all if no one is opening your email then that’s no good!
It’s wise to include other metrics to build your strategy, including re-engagement and retention campaigns.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
This is the next obvious metric as it’s usually displayed alongside Open Rate in ESP reporting.
It’s calculated by: (number of emails clicked / number of emails delivered) x 100
Because CTR doesn’t rely on open rates to be calculated, it won’t be affected by MPP giving you a more reliable picture across your campaigns.
Unique Opens vs Repeat Opens
These percentages will give you a clear idea of how many users are going back to your email over and over.
This is a good metric to gauge how desirable the contents of your email are if users keep going back to it. Used in conjunction with heatmaps, this can be a powerful way to optimise your future campaigns with sections that you know get engagement.
Conversion Rate
A big one, especially in the world of e-commerce. This will be one of your biggest indicators of success when it comes to returning on investment (ROI).
If however you aren’t providing a service or goods and your website relies on lead generation, you need to make sure goals are set up in analytics to correctly track a user’s activity on-site. Without this, there is no clear indication of how well your campaigns are performing outside of clicks and opens.
Subscriber lifetime value (LTV)
This is a useful metric if you are wanting to determine how valuable each subscriber is on your list. It can be combined with acquisition cost to determine the best signup source/method for the most valuable subscribers.
Simply multiply the subscribers (daily, weekly, monthly, annual) revenue by the length of time they’ve been on your list (daily, weekly, monthly, annual).
Summary
Find what works best for you, your business and your subscribers. Don’t just stick to one metric, use many to get the whole picture and better understand your email performance.
Keep an eye on our blog for updates about the email marketing landscape and other channels.
If you’re interested in seeing if email marketing could work for your business, contact us today for more information.
