Apple’s iOS 15 Updates: How AVADA Adapts to This Change

Overview

As one of AVADA Commerce's marketers, one of the key metrics I use to measure email success is open rate.

Let's be honest: when an email open rate is high, it hints that your subject line completed its job to pull readers, you are sending emails at the most engaging time of day, or your audiences are eagerly waiting to receive your content. When it is low, it signals that your subscribers might not even be reading your content.

However, now, the way email marketers improve open rates could change due to the latest Apple's iOS 15 updates.

So, in this guide, we'll discuss how iOS 15 updates will impact email marketing, as well as what you can do to adjust your marketing strategy to cope without open metrics. Let's get going!

How will iOS 15 impact email marketing?

In early June, Apple released news of its upcoming iOS updates. Many marketers call this a big turning point for email marketers.

With this update, expected to come sometime in this fall, anywhere from September through November, Apple users now will be able to:

- Turn off open tracking

- Hide your IP address

- Hide your email address

When all is said and done, marketers believe the update hinders their ability to measure success across email marketing campaigns. This may require marketers to focus on more meaningful email engagement, such as generating clicks.

Which AVADA features will be impacted by iOS 15 updates?

Segmentation by email open rates

Firstly, segmentation by email open rates won't be reliable anymore. That's because you won't be able to identify if your subscribers who use the Apple Mail App have opened the email themselves or the iPhone system has made it for them.

Email Booster

Based on open rate, Email Booster lets you resend a campaign to those who didn't open an initial campaign. With iOS 15, Email Booster will no longer work for Apple Mail clients. That's because Apple Mail clients have their emails opened automatically, and there is no way to tell whether the recipient or a bot has opened the email.

Split by the email open rates in the automation

Yes/No Splits and Multiple Splits themselves will work just fine. Nevertheless, it will not be effective to split by open rates in automation workflows anymore.

For instance, if you have been sending follow-up emails to anyone who has opened the first email in the automation workflow and assuming that they are interested in your content, you will not be able to do that now. It might be the iPhone system opening the email for the subscriber and not the client himself opening the email you have sent to him.

Reports

We still keep open rate as one of the essential metrics for email marketing campaigns.

Although Apple Mail and Apple mobile devices account for more than 35% of the global email provider market share, Google, Outlook, and other email providers haven't announced similar privacy updates. That means their open and IP data still provide solid tracking information for email marketers.

While other companies, like Google or Microsoft, could follow suit on email privacy, it is essential to remember that you will still get open data from them for the time being, while still making some judgments on the success of opens from these email providers.

Read more: How to Read Your Reports and Learn

What segmentation alternatives do you have in AVADA?

The email marketing game might be losing open rates, but they are not the only way to determine whether a recipient is interested in your content or not. The power of segmentation doesn't entirely rely on the open rates, and there are many other ways to know which customers are engaged with your content.

Below are several ideas for you:

Click Rate

After hearing how iOS 15 updates will impact the open rate, we may immediately think of click rate. The good news is that iOS 15 updates are not affecting the click rate. Therefore, you can keep using this metric to determine the people who have interacted with your email.

Engagement-based segments

Your engagement-based segment no longer depends only or mainly on open rates. Consider expanding the criteria to include clicks and purchase activity. Of course, the number of subscribers who meet these criteria will be smaller after the update, but it is an excellent way to continue having highly targeted engagement segments.

Some ideas for your engagement-based segments include:

- Customers who have subscribed to your newsletter in the last 30-90 days. If someone has subscribed to your list recently, they are definitely expecting to get emails from you. Ensure to use "subscribed at" and "email opt-in" rules in this segment.

- Customers who have placed orders in the last 30-90 days. Studies show that, on average, 65% of revenue is generated from existing customers. That means customers who have recently placed orders are likely to be interested in your content, and attractive offers may encourage them to buy again. We recommend you use the rule of "placed order in the last 30-90 days" to create a segment of active and engaged customers.

- Customers who are VIPs. If you're running a reward/ loyalty program, you may want to know your most valuable clients. These are also your most active and engaged customers. You can segment them into big spenders or frequent purchasers. The details are mentioned in this guide.

Using Email Preferences to segment audiences

Collect more information from your customers using email preferences to deliver relevant content to those interested, instead of sending the same email campaign to everybody in your list.

For instance, if you are selling apparel & accessories, you can ask if your subscribers are interested in products for men or women. By doing so, you won't promote men's clothes to women and vice versa. You can try different custom properties, such as their favorite color, size, etc.

You can also gather data on how often your subscribers want to receive content from you. Just ask them at the end of your email, or direct them to your email setting page.

Don't panic! Many other marketing options are waiting for you...

The iOS 15 updates will impact email marketing - but it is not the end of the world. The big difference between a good marketer and a poor one is not the tools they use or operate under perfect conditions, but the ability to quickly adapt to any conditions.

To be honest, if you haven't added other channels to your marketing strategy, then you are already behind the industry.

Other marketing channels, such as SMS, Push Notifications, and WhatsApp can help expand your reach.

SMS channel

You might have known this fact: SMS has never had open rates, but still brings massive value to those who use it!

Studies show that up to 98% of sent text messages are read!

Therefore, if you haven't used the SMS channel, we believe this is an excellent opportunity to get started now and grow your sales with AVADA SMS marketing.

Note: It becomes much more effective if you combine email and SMS marketing. Just send an email campaign to your subscribers first. Then a day later, you can send an SMS campaign to those who haven't clicked any links in the email campaign and haven't ordered any items. This way, you will reach even more customers through their mobile phones.

Push notification channel

Most of the time, E-commerce businesses focus on email marketing exclusively. However, the opportunity becomes bigger if you show a short and catchy notification even when the customer isn't browsing your website.

With the Push Notification channel in place, you'll attract your customers' attention and drive more sales to your store.

WhatsApp Channel

AVADA also supports WhatsApp automation and Manual WhatsApp that connect your audiences directly via their WhatsApp account. Similar to SMS, WhatsApp is even more friendly and easy to deliver messages.

Find more guides on how to connect WhatsApp Automation here.

Should you have any questions about this topic, feel free to drop a line with us via our in-app live chat or <win@avada.io>.

Updated on: 17/08/2022