Apple and tracking

At Apple’s most recent developer conference, they unveiled the coming updates to iOS, iPadOS and macOS, the operating systems for iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.

One of the new features is an increased focus on privacy, and that will affect how systems like Ubivox handle statistics in future.

iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey – and tracking

With the next version of the operating systems, Apple will begin handling the loading of images in emails differently than before. A new setting, “Protect Mail Activity”, is being added to the Mail app, although it is switched off by default. If you switch it on, the Mail app will load images in received emails at random.

Technically, systems like Ubivox work by registering an open of an email when the images in that email are loaded. That gives a fairly reliable picture of how many recipients open your emails. We call it the open rate.

From now on, when an email is received, the Mail app will load the images at a random time from a random IP address – whether or not the recipient opens the email. That means it will look to Ubivox as though the recipient has opened the email, even when they have not.

The random IP address will also mean that we can no longer tell which region the email was opened from.

We are of course looking into how this change should be handled at a system level – should we filter out these image loads? Then your open rate falls. Should we include them? Then your open rate rises. Should we ignore all opens from Apple users, and at the same time leave them out of the total number of recipients – so that the open rate stays the same, but is still less accurate?

We will announce the final solution in due course, but the fact is that open rates will also become less and less accurate going forward, and will lose value as an indication of how well your newsletter is doing.

Please note: Click statistics remain accurate, because links are not visited automatically by the Mail app.