Why your email open rate should increase this week...

Yep! We're watching this with interest as an email marketing provider. More opens (even if false) mean more data to process so costs may increase and there's also there's the consideration around whether the open metric will be useful anymore once iOS is fully adopted.

We're calling this behaviour 'pre-fetching' and have some further things to consider from what we've observed:

As @jamesgill said above, this appears to be only happening when connected to WiFi at present.
Emails are only 'opened' if the Mail app is running in the background and connected to an email provider, this means an open is still a very strong signal that the email addresses are currently in use and are valid. So there will still be some value in purging inactive (meaning old not-used) email addresses.
It'll take time to see the open rate gently increase, while we're all techie and downloading it with excitement that won't be the case everywhere. Looking at previous iOS releases it could take up to 3 months to see 80% adoption of iOS15, and 50% adoption around 1 month.
At present it is possible to spot the pre-fetching in action. This is because the proxy uses Cloudflare and Fastly IPs alongside an empty user agent. So there likely will be data in the coming months as to the impact.
Things such as countdown timers and automatic send-time optimisation (which was based on opens) will not be as useful as they were as they will give incorrect readings back on iOS15 devices.
Click tracking remains broadly unaffected, although are routed through Apple IP's so location is not as reliable as it were anymore for providers who report back on this (we don't). Apple do use servers close to the user though.

Ultimately this change is not yet the end of the world, but it's great to educate people and this is a great thread. Thanks for sharing @russellvaughan

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Little bit of a thread here – and thanks for posting here, Russell!

Also to add – from @td_evans – the images will only be opened by Apple "When connected to WiFi and not in low power mode."

It looks like we're all going to be learning from the new iOS changes over the coming days.

jamesgill

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5 years ago
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  Yep! We're watching this with interest as an email marketing provider. More opens (even if false) mean more data to process so costs may increase and there's also there's the consideration around whether the open metric will be useful anymore once iOS is fully adopted.
  
  We're calling this behaviour 'pre-fetching' and have some further things to consider from what we've observed:
  
  As @jamesgill said above, this appears to be only happening when connected to WiFi at present.
  
  Emails are only 'opened' if the Mail app is running in the background and connected to an email provider, this means an open is still a very strong signal that the email addresses are currently in use and are valid. So there will still be some value in purging inactive (meaning old not-used) email addresses.
  
  It'll take time to see the open rate gently increase, while we're all techie and downloading it with excitement that won't be the case everywhere. Looking at previous iOS releases it could take up to 3 months to see 80% adoption of iOS15, and 50% adoption around 1 month.
  
  At present it is possible to spot the pre-fetching in action. This is because the proxy uses Cloudflare and Fastly IPs alongside an empty user agent. So there likely will be data in the coming months as to the impact.
  
  Things such as countdown timers and automatic send-time optimisation (which was based on opens) will not be as useful as they were as they will give incorrect readings back on iOS15 devices.
  
  Click tracking remains broadly unaffected, although are routed through Apple IP's so location is not as reliable as it were anymore for providers who report back on this (we don't). Apple do use servers close to the user though.
  
  Ultimately this change is not yet the end of the world, but it's great to educate people and this is a great thread. Thanks for sharing @russellvaughan
  td_evans
  
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  5 years ago
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    @td_evans Thanks so much for sharing this – you clearly understand the area and issues / changes here very deeply! Thanks for the huge and helpful comment 🙌
    
    jamesgill
    
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    5 years ago
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