It is no secret that Apple is a company that has always worked to protect the privacy of its users, demonstrating this once again with the recent release of the iOS 15 operating system, which includes the Mail Privacy Protection feature for the Mail app.
This new update is changing the rules of the game, putting in check all our email marketing strategies, which is a real challenge for marketers and all the brands.
While this feature is optional and is not activated by default, it is expected that most users will choose to enable it, just as happened with the release of iOS 14.5 and the App Tracking Transparency feature, which prevents developers from tracking user activity through apps.
We live in an era in which personalization is everything in creating positive experiences for consumers, an era in which email innovation has broken down barriers, achieving a more personal communication with our users.
People are unaware that by selecting the option "Protect activity in Mail", they will be limiting their own email marketing experience, because much of their information will be hidden in the process, for example, geolocation, time of interaction and identification of the user's device; affecting the personalization of the email, as well as the generation of statistics that allows us, marketers, to evaluate the performance of campaigns.
Another obstacle that is presented to us after the iOS 15 update, is that the system will preload the images contained in the email, even if the emails have not been opened, which will result in a false increase in the open rate.
With the new update of Apple's operating system, the question comes, What is the ideal content for our email marketing campaigns?
You may be thinking of using a homemade GIF and sending it to your complete database, without taking into account the different devices on which your email can be opened.
In this case, the answer is a resounding "NO". Not only the quality of the GIF will be very low, you will have a problem as well if your email is opened in the Mail application on Mac devices, because the GIF will load with interruptions, decreasing the quality of your emails and damaging the experience of your users along with your brand image.
Also, remember that sending a video by email through our platform will allow you to know its performance in real time, thanks to our advanced statistics system, which helps you to evaluate the success of your video.
For these reasons, the "video" is the best format option that you can include in your email marketing campaigns, because it is an attractive, dynamic, easy to assimilate and measurable format. Moreover, thanks to our platform, you can rest assured that your video will be viewed, even on Apple devices updated with iOS 15.
The generation of "non-invasive experiences" in marketing is not something new, it is a practice that has been observed for more than a year, in which, companies like Gmail, Google, Facebook and Instagram, do not allow the automatic activation of audio in videos with autoplay function, in all these platforms, a preview of the video without audio is shown first and then the user decides if he wants to watch and listen to the full video.
In this context, our developer team has been working on a new update of our code, exceeding all expectations with the VIEWED 18.0 version compatible with iOS 15, which allows brands to continue creating amazing video email campaigns, complying with all quality standards and privacy regulations, in addition, improving the user experience while optimizing the conversion rate.
In our previous version, when sending a video email to recipients with Apple devices, an image with the play icon was displayed, which when clicked, redirected the user to QuickTime. Now with VIEWED 18.0, we have said goodbye to clickable images, making it possible for these same users to watch the video in autoplay with high image quality at the instant they open the email.
The video is displayed without audio to maintain a non-invasive experience, which contributes to lowering your unsubscribe rate and improving the level of interaction.
When viewing a muted video, the limbic system in the recipient's brain is activated, arousing their curiosity and motivating them to click to watch the video with audio.
When persuading users to open the video with audio, we are increasing the click-through rate, therefore improving your reputation with Google and other servers, benefiting the deliverability of your future email marketing campaigns.
Finally, with VIEWED 18.0 you will be able to configure, depending on the objective of your campaign, the landing page where your users will arrive after clicking to listen to the video.
If it is a branding campaign, the goal is usually to get more views, so we recommend the standard configuration, so that the user is directed to a landing page hosted on our platform (more views in less time and with fewer clicks); however, if the campaign is a conversion campaign, it is advisable to take the user to your own landing page, to increase your traffic level and your conversion rate.
We encourage you to try our new update, because we are convinced that with VIEWED you will be successful in all your campaigns.