The changes that Apple has made in its Mail Privacy Protection movement have had an adverse impact on open rates. In short, because Apple mail clients across desktop, tablet and mobile are loading images before the end user opens them, tracking pixels that indicate when an email is opened are being triggered even if the user doesn’t actually open them.

The clicks from emails and the revenue that is generated through email channels will be unaffected, so in the short term this change should not have an impact on a retailer’s bottom line.

However, given that many retail marketers use open rates to measure customer engagement, to trigger follow-up campaigns, and various other activities, it’s likely that these will all be affected by the change. 

So what do retailers need to do about this, and should open rates be discounted entirely?

We took some of our customers through the situation and gave some best practice advice to them. But we wanted to share this advice with anyone looking to reconsider how they measure customer engagement and how they can ensure that email deliverability will be unaffected by the change.

To see our recommendations for what you should do now, download the guide here.