How does Apple's Hide My Email affect feedback loops and email blocking?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Validity shares that Apple Mail Privacy Protection changes the way email open rates are measured. Due to the privacy features, it becomes more difficult to track individual behavior and personalize emails. Marketers may need to rely on other metrics, such as click-through rates and conversion rates, to measure success.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that Apple rewrites the header from and signs it with `privaterelay.appleid.com`. This is different than auto-forwards (where mail gets automatically forwarded from gmail to yahoo for example and the headers remain intact), where you could get Yahoo ARF reports for emails sent to gmail.
Email marketer from EmailOnAcid Blog shares that Apple's Hide My Email feature creates unique, random email addresses that forward to your real inbox. This can make it harder to track users and personalize emails, potentially affecting segmentation and targeting strategies. It recommends monitoring how these addresses affect engagement metrics.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor explains that Apple Mail Privacy Protection means that email open rates can no longer be relied on as an accurate metric for engagement. All emails sent to Apple Mail users will be reported as opened, regardless of whether they were actually opened. This requires marketers to adjust their strategies for measuring success.
Email marketer from Litmus Blog shares that Apple's Hide My Email feature impacts marketers because it obscures the user's real email address. This makes it more difficult to track individual user behavior and attribute conversions accurately. Segmentation and personalization strategies may need adjustments.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow explains that using Hide My Email can impact deliverability if the generated email address is used to send spam. If Apple detects spam originating from a Hide My Email address, it could affect the sender's reputation and lead to blocking or filtering.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog responds that Apple's Hide My Email is part of a broader trend toward user privacy. This will require marketers to focus on obtaining explicit consent, providing value, and respecting user preferences to maintain engagement and avoid being marked as spam. Monitoring open rates and click-through rates becomes even more critical.
Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog explains that the Hide My Email feature affects email marketing because it can complicate tracking and identifying users. Marketers need to rely more on first-party data and focus on building trust and providing value to encourage users to share their real email addresses willingly.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that if a user marks an email sent to their Hide My Email address as spam, the complaint is likely handled by Apple. Apple may then take action against the sender if a pattern of abuse is detected. The impact on the original sender's reputation depends on how Apple handles these complaints and whether they share feedback with ESPs.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that Apple's Hide My Email service, by masking the user's real email address, complicates the feedback loop process. It's crucial to understand how Apple handles forwarding and whether they provide any mechanism for reporting spam complaints back to the original sender. The key is whether Apple provides enough information in the headers to trace the complaint back to the original sender.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that Yahoo FBL is based on DKIM and it depends on how/if Apple rewrites the headers when dropping the HME mail in your Yahoo account. If they leave the sender DKIM in place and it passes then it'll count as a Yahoo complaint as far as Yahoo is concerned. If not, if Apple re-signs it with their own DKIM, then Apple takes the hit.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Apple Support explains that Hide My Email allows users to create unique, random email addresses when signing up for services. These addresses forward to the user's primary email address, protecting their real email from being shared. Apple handles the forwarding and can disable the address if it's used for spam or other unwanted communications.
Documentation from Google Support explains that to prevent emails from being blocked, ensure that the sending domain is properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Also, ensure that the sending IP address is not on any blocklists and that the email content is not considered spammy. Also keep your spam complaint rate low.
Documentation from RFC Editor explains that Automated Feedback Reports (ARF) reports rely on specific header information to identify the original sender of a message. When an email is forwarded through a service like Hide My Email, it is important that the original headers are preserved or that the forwarding service includes appropriate information in the ARF report to allow the sender to identify and address the issue.
Documentation from Fastmail explains that when using masked email addresses, feedback loops (FBLs) can still work if the email service provides the necessary information to the sender. However, it depends on how the masked email service handles forwarding and header rewriting. If the original sender's information is preserved, FBLs can be processed correctly.