Have your email campaign open rates been all over the map the last couple years? Are those open rates going up while conversions and other core business metrics, like sales, are lagging behind? Your tracking my be impacted by Apple Mail’s Main Privacy Protection features.
Below you will find a summary of the changes brought about by Apple’s privacy changes, how they are likely to have affected your email marketing efforts and what you can do to get back on the right track.
Overview
What Is Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)?
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is a privacy feature introduced in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey and watchOS 8 (all released September 2021) that helps users protect their email activity from being tracked by senders. It works by preventing senders from knowing when precisely an email is opened while also masking the recipient’s IP address, making it harder to track their location or online activity.
Key Features of Mail Privacy Protection for the Public (MPP):
Prevents Open Tracking – Email senders typically use tracking pixels to detect when and where an email is opened. MPP preloads remote content in the background, making it appear as if every email is opened even before it is read by the recipient. This prevents accurate open tracking.
Masks IP Address – MPP routes email content through multiple intermediary proxy servers, hiding the recipient’s actual IP address. This prevents senders from determining the recipient’s approximate location or linking their email activity to other online behaviors.
Hides User Activity – Since all remote content is loaded privately, senders cannot track interactions, like how often an email is revisited or whether images, like tracking pixels, were manually downloaded.
How Does Mail Privacy Protect Work (Short Version)?
When enabled, the Apple Mail app preloads email content through multiple proxy servers instead of directly from the email sender’s servers.
Remote content is downloaded privately before you open the email.
Senders see a proxy IP address instead of your real one. IP addresses are typically correlated to your approximate physical location.
Due to the above, email opens are masked. Senders will see their emails as opened regardless of whether they actually opened them.
As Apple states in the iOS 16 feature acceptance dialog text:
“Protect Mail Activity help protect your privacy by preventing email senders including Apple, from learning information about your Mail activity. When you receive an email in the Mail app, rather than downloading remote content when you open an email, Protect Mail Activity downloads remote content in the background by default – regardless of whether you engage with the email. Apple does not learn any information about the content.
In addition, Protect Mail Activity routes all remote content downloaded by Mail through two separate relays operated by different entities. The first knows your IP address, but not the remote Mail content you receive. The second knows the remote Mail content you receive, but not your IP address, instead providing a generalized identity to the destination. This way, no single entity has the information to identity both you and the remote Mail content you receive. Senders can’t use your IP address as a unique identifier to connect activity across websites or apps to build a profile about you.”
Accessed in iOS 16 on 2/13/25. See also Apple’s statements on MPP.
Which Users Are Impacted by MPP?
How Many of Your Email Subscribers Does MPP Affect?
The B2C email campaigns I’ve sent on behalf of clients in 2025, show that approximately 64% of subscribers open those emails using a MPP-capable version of Apple Mail (version 15 or later). This is an increase from the Apple Mail adoption figure of 52% reported by major email service providers in 2021 when MPP was originally rolled out, or the 49% reported by Litmus in early 2025. Expect at least 45-65% of your subscribers to open emails on Apple Mail and more specifically on iPhone (given Apple’s small ~10% share of the rather stagnant PC market).
Back in 2022 SendGrid and other sources reported that MPP features were not automatically turned on by default. However, it does appear that the app setting in iOS under Settings >> Apps >> Mail >> Privacy Protection is set to on by default even for users not actually using the Mail app. I would consider this an open question at this time. You may wish to check the setting on your own iPhone.
Does Apple’s Email Privacy Protection Impact Email Opened in Other iOS or MacOS Apps (e.g., Outlook, GMail, Fastmail, etc.)?
In short, no. These feature only impact users of Apple Mail. However, those users exist in significant numbers.
Does Apple’s Email Privacy Protection Impact Users Accessing Web-based Email such as GMail.com, Yahoo.com, or Outlook.com?
MPP affects Apple Mail users only. Please note that Apple Mail can be used to check emails accounts provided by a variety of services, for example, Yahoo, Gmail, MS Exchange, Outlook.com, AOL, etc. A subscriber may have a Yahoo email address, but open that email exclusively using Apple Mail and therefore be using MPP.
What Are the Impacts of Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) on Your Email Marketing Campaigns and How Can You Solve Them?
Open Rates Become Over Inflated and Unreliable
Impact:
As mentioned, Apple’s MPP preloads email images and tracking pixels, making it appear as if all emails are opened, even if the recipient never actually views them. Therefore, marketers can no longer accurately measure open rates, leading to misleading open metrics and reporting.
Open rate-based strategies (e.g., automated follow-ups, subject line A/B testing, and re-engagement campaigns) are now much less effective and prone to error.
Actions to Take:
You’ll need to shift focus to more reliable engagement metrics further down the customer interaction path. For example:
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Total click-through volume per email
- Dwell time on linked target pages
- Conversions
- Reply rates
- Email shares (commonly part of CTR data)
Reduced Ability to Track User Location & Device Information
Impact:
Apple’s MPP hides the recipient’s IP address behind proxy servers, preventing marketers from determining their geographic location or which device they are using if checking email from more than one.
This disrupts location-based targeting, time-zone personalization, and regional segmentation.
Actions to Take:
Marketers will need to rely on collecting user data directly from the subscriber (e.g., asking for location preferences) rather than passive tracking. Not all users will divulge such information and additional data collection during the subscription process will tend to reduce subscription rates and add friction to the sign-up process overall.
Given that users’ locations are not well known under MPP, time-sensitive emails (e.g., “This discount ends at midnight”) may meet with increasing scheduling difficulties the closer the send time is to the offer deadline. Tight scheduling could result in emails arriving after the expiration of the deadline if your subscribers are geographically diverse.
New Challenges for List Segmentation & Automated Workflows
Impact:
Many email campaigns use “last opened” data to segment users (e.g., sending re-engagement emails to inactive users after a specific amount of time).
Since MPP marks emails as “opened” even when they aren’t, inactive subscribers may appear active, causing inefficiencies in engagement-based automation.
Actions to Take:
Consider shifting all open-based segmentation to click-based segmentation (e.g., users who clicked a link instead of just opening an email).
Engagement-based automated workflows must be redesigned to avoid relying on open rates.
A/B Testing and Subject Line Optimizations Are Less Effective
Many email marketers, myself included, test subject lines based on open rates to determine which version performs best. These are usually handled on a per campaign basis where initially a limited number of subscribers are sent “Subject Line A” and another limited group “Subject Line B.” If a statistically significant number of recipients open A or B, the remainder of the campaign emails are sent with that subject line with the overall goal of increasing open rates.
Impact:
With MPP, open rate-based A/B testing is unreliable.
Actions to Take:
Remember that open rates are impacted for users with Apple Mail with MPP enabled, and while that is likely a significant portion of your subscribers, it is not all of them. You can segment recipients on your list that are not using Apple Mail and A/B test using that group separately. While not perfect, it does eliminate a major source of unreliable data. This works particularly well if you are testing broader subject line “templates” or word structures and are likely to be used in future campaigns.
When reporting campaign results, marketers should focus on click-through rates, on-page metrics, conversions, and overall revenue impact as better indicators of campaign success.
Subject line testing should be supplemented with survey data and qualitative feedback from engaged users. Try to address actual user needs and interests with the subject lines you use and the content you provide.
Click and Conversion Tracking Become Far More Important Now and in Future
Impact:
As open-rates provide limited value, the value of other metrics increase.
Actions to Take:
Since open rates are unreliable, marketers must shift to click-through rates (CTR), website visits, form submissions, and conversions as key performance indicators (KPIs).
Increase your emphasis on tracking email clicks, purchases, and website engagement rather than just email opens or other “reach” type metrics.
Brands may incentivize direct responses and interactions, such as surveys, downloads, or personalized links, to better measure engagement once the email has been opened.
Email Deliverability & Inbox Placement Impacts and Response Strategies
Impact
Some email providers use open rates to gauge email engagement and thereby determine whether messages should land in the inbox or spam folder.
If MPP falsely inflates open rates reported to these providers as well, ensuring your email arrives in the inbox is increasingly important. Inbox placement strategies may need adjustment.
Actions to Take:
Email deliverability tracking tools need to shift toward click engagement and response tracking instead of open rates.
Senders should closely monitor unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, and sentiment of user replies to gauge sender reputation.
Shore up open rates by re-focusing on inbox deliverability in general. Better deliverability improves total opens on average even where opens are not trackable simply by delivering more emails to the inbox.
- Ensure you have the DNS records for SPF, DKIM and DMARC well-sorted for your sending domains.
- Encourage subscribers to whitelist your incoming emails as part of your initial on-boarding process.
- Focus on delivering high value quality content in your email campaigns. Nothing gets a click-though faster than delivering something of indispensable value.
- If you still use opens as a measure of inbox deliverability switch to click-through rates. Consider reviewing your legacy data to roughly understand common ratio of opens to total clicks per send so you may guesstimate opens if they are still important to you.
- Be especially mindful of your send rates and they may reduce opens. High send rates can lead to email fatigue and churn (aka unsubscription). Fatigue will force a marginally interested person to leave your emails unopened signaling to email platforms (e.g., GMail, Yahoo) that your emails may be spammy or belong in a filtered tab/directory generally thus tanking open rates for addresses on that email provider. Generally, a send rate of greater than one email per week runs a fatigue risk in almost all cases.
- If you are still running open triggered automations, make absolutely sure they are not running amok. False opens triggered by MPP can be sending follow up emails automatically leading to even more unopened emails. This will cause a negative spiral where a lack of opens eventually undermines inbox deliverability, leads to confusion for the receiver, and more unsubscribes.
How Are Major Email Marketing Service Providers Dealing with the Apple Mail Email Privacy Issue?
MailChimp
Now provides a option on the dashboard to exclude MPP opens from your reporting. That can be done retroactively only for emails sent after June 22, 2024.
Brevo (Formerly Send In Blue)
Initially Brevo provided customers an estimated open rate based on their own data, but as of February 6, 2025 they no longer exclude Apple MPP opens by default. There is a option in settings to toggle the inclusions on or off as you prefer.
Campaign Monitor (Marigold)
Campaign Monitor has taken the approach of deemphasizing open data and click-to-open rate while not providing a means to toggle including of MPP affected data. Reporting still contains open data, but it is downplayed in the reporting.
They also help customers understand the potential extent of the issue by providing good data on the email app or programs used by campaign recipients and noting which versions are impacted by MPP on any email campaign sent after February 2022.
Has Your Email Marketing Adapted to a Mail Privacy World?
Have you taken specific actions to address the issues discussed above? Let me know below in the comments.
Have questions about your email marketing and how to adapt to these changes, contact me.
In the meantime, happy emailing and stay out of the spam folder!
