CEE Trendspotting: Saying ‘Goodbye’ to Email Open Rates

October 18, 2021 by lmiller
Filed in: CEE Trendspotting, News Tag: Event Marketing

A big change has arrived for those of us that use email marketing to promote IEEE conferences and events. In September 2021, Apple Mail updated their Privacy Protection to give users the option to share if and when they opened emails.

Why is this important?
Typically, Open Rates have been used as a key performance metric to understand how emails are resonating with subscribers. A high open rate indicates interest and deliverability to your mailing list, while a low open rate would be a red flag that there can be improvements to your content, subject line, or list subscribers.

According to Litmus, Apple Mail is one of the most popular email clients in use today. In 2021, Apple devices accounted for approximately 52 percent of all email opens.

So, what do we do?
While this update will impact email marketing moving forward, there are a few ways we can adapt including:

  • Prioritize other metrics to understand performance, such as click-through rates, website visits, and unsubscribe rates.
  • If you have any marketing automations set up, adjust them to automate based on actions and clicks, rather than email opens.
  • Increase overall email engagement with personalization, timing, and diversification of content

For more information, here’s a helpful blog post on “How Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Impacts Email Marketing” from Constant Contact: https://blogs.constantcontact.com/apple-mail-privacy-protection-for-email-marketing/

The bottom line is that email marketing is and should continue to be part of your event promotion efforts! If you would like help to get started or to adjust to these new changes, reach out to CEE Audience Development.

Headshot photo of Lea Provost from 2021

This article was written by:
Lea Provost
Sr. Program Manager, Audience Development Strategy Services
IEEE Conferences, Events & Experiences