Apple's Mail Privacy Protection automatically downloads email images before you open them, which makes open-rate tracking pixels fire without anyone actually reading the message. Jimmy Kim explains why marketers should stop trusting open rates as a real engagement metric.
Do you know how an open pixel was created? Yeah, so ESPs used to inject some kind of image that you couldn't really see into an email that was sent. And then when someone had opened it, that pixel would then fire registering it open. Is that fairly accurate?
That's correct. It's just an invisible image, a 1 by 1 pixel that's placed in. At one point it was great because it was rudimentary. If someone opened an email, an image would load. If the image is loading, the person must be opening and viewing the email, right? With MPP and all these changes, they're basically preloading all the images up so that it's a faster user experience. We as marketers should stop looking at this as a real data point.
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