Working with Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) changes how email tracking works. It blocks tracking pixels, hides IP addresses, and breaks the link between email opens and user activity. This affects how you measure performance, especially open rates.

Use this article to learn how MPP affects your metrics and how to get reliable data.

What MPP blocks

MPP prevents senders from tracking users through email. MPP blocks:

• Open tracking: You can’t detect when someone opens an email.
• IP address collection: You can't see where users are located because MPP hides the user's IP address.
• Activity linking: You can’t connect email engagement to other behavior.

To learn how iOS changes affect email practices, watch this video.

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Note

Find more videos about iOS 15 in the free Engagement Mini Masterclass from Bloomreach Academy.

How MPP affects your email data

What MPP impacts

MPP only affects Apple Mail users who enable this privacy feature. This creates these reporting issues:

• Inflated open rates: Apple preloads images when emails are delivered. This triggers your tracking pixel, even if the user never opens the email.
• False positives: These are "fake opens" caused by Apple’s preloading, not by users.
• Cross-platform impact: MPP affects all Apple devices using Apple Mail (iOS and macOS).
• All email providers: MPP applies to any address (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) if it’s used with Apple Mail.

What MPP doesn't impact

MPP doesn't affect delivery, bounce, or click metrics. These remain reliable for measuring campaign performance.

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Important

Use clicks and other non-open metrics to track real engagement from Apple Mail users.

Use segmentation for insights

Apple devices account for about 52% of all email opens. Use segmentation to separate MPP-influenced data from real user activity.

Download the Apple Mail segmentation dashboard

1. Go to the Use Case Center.
2. Download the Apple Mail segmentation dashboard.
3. Import the dashboard into your account.

This dashboard helps you:

• Segment users based on reliable engagement data.
• Separate real opens from inflated opens.
• Target email campaigns more effectively.
• Compare email metrics between MPP and non-MPP subscribers
• Track true open rates, click-through rates, and spam complaint rates.

Understand data limitations

Some Bloomreach dashboards exclude MPP opens when calculating open rates. This removes both real and fake opens from affected users and devices. Since MPP inflates open tracking, most of these opens don’t reflect real behavior.

Adjust your email strategy

To get better results, adapt how you measure and act on email engagement.

• Focus on clicks: Use click-through rates as your main metric.
• Segment by MPP: Create separate segments for MPP and non-MPP users.
• Test send times: Since you can't track real opens, test different send times and measure clicks instead.
• Review automation triggers: Don’t use “email opened” as a trigger for automated campaigns targeting Apple Mail users.