How do Apple Mail user settings impact email deliverability and spam filtering?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Geeks says that the Apple Mail setting only impacts the spam filter of the Apple Mail client and not iCloud or other mailbox providers' spam filters.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) significantly impacts email marketing by masking open rates, which affects segmentation strategies. Marketers need to adapt by focusing on other engagement metrics.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) affects email tracking accuracy by pre-loading images, leading to inflated open rates. This makes it difficult to reliably measure user engagement based on opens alone.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor states that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates open rates due to pre-fetching images, making them an unreliable metric for measuring engagement. Other metrics, like clicks and conversions, should be prioritized.
Email marketer from Gmass shares that asking recipients to add your email address to their address book helps you avoid the spam folder and improve your sender reputation, as it signals to email providers like Apple Mail that your messages are wanted.
Email marketer from EmailToolTester suggests that encouraging recipients to add your sending address to their contacts in Apple Mail can improve deliverability as it signals that the sender is trusted. Also implement authentication protocols.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has made open rates less reliable, making it necessary to look at other engagement metrics like click-through rates and conversions to measure campaign success.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection affects A/B testing based on open rates because of inflated open counts. Focusing on click-through rates and conversion metrics provides more reliable insights.
Email marketer from Return Path shares that positive user interaction, such as adding senders to contacts and moving emails to the inbox, improves sender reputation and deliverability. Apple Mail user settings directly impact these interactions.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Spam Resource explains user engagement (such as marking emails as 'not spam,' moving to inbox, adding to contacts) greatly impacts deliverability, particularly with Apple Mail. Positive actions improve sender reputation; negative actions harm it.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that Apple mail client has a setting to allow mail either from previous recipients or folks in your contact list.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) impacts email tracking by pre-loading images, leading to inflated open rates and making it harder to determine true engagement. Suggests focusing on clicks, conversions, and other user actions.
Expert from Email Geeks states that while providing instructions to users to add senders to their address book has been advice going back to AOL days and likely has some impact, it is unclear how applicable it is on modern mailservers and doesn’t recall seeing many senders actually do this in a long time.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Apple Support explains how users can customize mail settings on their Mac to block senders, mark emails as junk, and manage their contacts, influencing what emails are filtered as spam or reach their inbox.
Documentation from Apple explains that iCloud mail uses sophisticated spam filtering techniques. User settings like blocking senders and marking emails as junk directly train iCloud's spam filters, improving accuracy over time.
Documentation from Spamhaus explains that user engagement, including whether users mark emails as spam or move them to the inbox, is a key factor in determining email deliverability. Apple Mail's user settings directly influence these signals.
Documentation from Microsoft explains about how using Safe Senders lists, and blocking email addresses helps ensure you control what you see. Although this is for Outlook the same concepts apply across all major email providers.
Documentation from Google explains that Users can prevent emails from going to spam in Gmail by adding the sender to their contacts or by marking the email as “Not spam.”