Apple is expected to release iOS 18 publicly this year, and it includes significant changes to Apple Mail. This means big changes in email marketing strategies. Here’s a look at the new features, their likely impact, and steps you can take now.
“I think there are two big changes coming for Apple Mail users,” said Brian McKenna, vice president of CRM at digital marketing agency DMI Partners. “The first is that artificial intelligence is coming into the inbox in terms of auto-reply suggestions, email summaries and message categorization. And the biggest change is that Apple Mail will now have tabs.
Remember, iOS 18 affects anyone using Apple Mail on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, regardless of email domain. This includes people with Gmail, Yahoo, or other addresses who use Apple Mail. With Apple Mail accounting for nearly half of all email opens, these changes are far-reaching.
iOS 15 and Email Privacy Protection
To get an idea of the impact iOS 18 will have, let’s look at the disruption caused by iOS 15 in 2021. Its mail privacy protection pre-downloaded email images, including tracking pixels, thereby hiding the data opening rate.
“When iOS 15 came out, the big introduction was mail privacy protection,” McKenna said during a presentation for the MarTech Fall conference. “This was truly the first major disruption in measuring email opens. Anyone who opted for mail privacy protection was considered to have opened virtually everything. Open rates have therefore become inflated and opens have become less reliable in terms of measurements.
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This shows that any changes to Apple Mail can have significant, unintended consequences for email marketing.
Game changers: AI and inbox tabs
iOS 18 will impact email marketing strategies through two AI-powered features in Apple Mail.
To make email management easier for users, AI will facilitate auto-reply suggestions, email summaries, and message sorting.
For marketers, the biggest change will be the replacement of pre-headers with AI-generated summaries. Your carefully crafted pre-header text to entice emails to open? Disappeared. Instead, Apple’s AI will generate summaries based on the content of the email. Anyone who has done anything with AI knows that this could mean that some summaries will be wrong.
AI-based auto-reply suggestions also pose a challenge for marketers. Suggestions may include unsubscribing. The easier it becomes for users, the more likely they are to use it. You should already have the processes in place to handle unsubscribe requests initiated via auto-responses. If you don’t, say hello to subscriber churn and goodbye to precise mailing lists.
New and improved inbox tabs
Tabs are the other new feature you should be aware of. They are similar to the tabs used in Gmail. The new Apple Mail tabs should be: main, transactions, updates and promotions. While this can improve user experience, it raises concerns about potential reductions in marketer visibility and engagement.
“One thing we can say with certainty is that engagement rates will be negatively impacted for any email appearing in a folder other than the primary inbox,” McKenna said. “Specifically, the two most important things that should be impacted are open and click-through rates.”
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This is particularly concerning given the already unreliable open rate data due to mail privacy protections.
When Gmail introduced tabs, it initially reduced click-through rates. However, an interesting trend has emerged: an increase in click-to-conversion rates. This suggests that users who navigate to specific tabs, such as Promotions, are more motivated to engage and make purchases. Hopefully we’ll see the same thing in Apple Mail.
“A common question we get from all our customers is, “Will my emails end up in the promotions tab?” “, McKenna said. “Our common answer is, ‘A lot of you are sending promotional emails, so the answer is yes.’ The longer answer is that this will be determined on an individual email and individual subscriber basis.
Which tab emails go to is influenced by both the content and the subscriber’s past engagement with the sender. So if content is king, then engagement is at least a co-monarch. Subscribers who open, click, and forward emails from a certain sender are more likely to see those emails in the main or updates tabs. As always, focus on building strong relationships with subscribers. This will improve the chances of your emails being directed to the desired tabs.
What you can do NOW
You don’t need to know the final form of iOS 18 to prepare for it, McKenna said. Here’s what he suggests doing:
Segment your audience: Segmentation based on engagement levels is crucial. For highly engaged subscribers, increase email frequency to capitalize on their interest. For moderately engaged people, use strategies to nurture their interest and move them into the highly engaged category. Reduce email frequency for at-risk subscribers and experiment with different messages to re-engage them. For the uncommitted, pause regular mailings. Try re-engagement campaigns or remove them from your lists to avoid damaging the sender’s reputation.
Optimizing Email Templates: Prioritize live text over images in emails to improve AI understanding and summary accuracy. Clean up the code in templates to ensure a clear, well-organized structure. Make sure you have a range of templates that effectively deliver promotional and non-promotional content.
Rethink writing. Use subject lines that don’t rely on preheader text for context. Adopt an AI-aware writing style, focusing on clear and concise messages. (Another thing you should already be doing.) Use a less promotional tone and replace it with educational content and value-driven messages. Your content planning should include more non-promotional content. Measure, measure, measure. Adapt email content and copywriting strategies using data and insights. This will help you stay ahead of changing trends.
There are a bunch of things we won’t know until iOS 18 is released, so we can’t prepare for it. Will all Apple devices support all new features? Probably not, because the newer models are designed for AI. Can users enable or disable certain features? This could significantly influence tracking and personalization strategies. Finally, we don’t know the impact of AI-based email summaries. In other words, stay tuned for more changes.
