Apple's Mail Privacy Policy inflates email open rates, making them unreliable for measuring engagement. Jimmy Kim says marketers who optimize only for opens are flying blind and need to track other metrics instead.
Email engagement distortion. Now look, open rates have been shaky ever since the MPP or Mail Privacy Policy in iOS 15 came out. iOS 26 doesn't fix that. It almost doubles down on it. Open rates are gonna be more inflated, noisy, and even more, actually less trustworthy.
Imagine that they would double down. It seems like it's bad enough fine as it is, just let it be. But unfortunately that's not the case. So, you know, marketers that still optimize for kind of subject lines based solely on open rates are gonna have a harder time understanding what's actually happening. It's going to be like you talked about before. You're going to just be flying way more blind now.
Unfortunately, a lot of these other metrics are going to almost formulate it. And look, open rates will always be a trend line, but they won't ever be a real reliable magic. This isn't 1999 anymore, ultimately, and things are just ultimately changing. I remember open rates were very realistic before, but it just continues to change. And, you know, it's good for marketers to adapt. Subscribe to the pod.
