By now, you’ve probably heard the panic (which we at Stirista feel is largely unwarranted) among many companies in regard to Apple’s recent announcement that they will be blocking open pixels. Now, If you’re still wondering what that means, you’re not alone…Apple will essentially start caching all images in emails, which means open tracking pixels will be nullified. Sounds scary to many marketers but the reality is we should embrace it.
Like display, email opens are often wildly fabricated, or at the very least overestimated. Currently, pixel drop is how opens are tracked and many times, they don’t fire automatically anyway. Some panicky marketers who have relied on those overinflated rates for business are still guaranteeing 10-20% open rates but the reality is they often simply pick those numbers out of a hat. They are not going to be able to get away with that post-September 2021 because Apple Devices account for the lion’s share of those opens.
At Stirista we see this as a great opportunity to bring the industry back to reality. Marketers will really need to focus on their message, but they will also have to rely more on the modern, more accurate and viable, attribution tools that they should have been using all along. It may not provide the immediate gratification of a 10 or 20% open rate but it will allow them to know how many conversions they got – which is a more important metric than opens anyway. Now, marketers can leverage the truly meaningful metrics and get back to what really matters – finding the true ROI of their efforts.
