Definition
Apple Mail Privacy Protection
An Apple Mail feature that pre-loads email images through Apple's servers, recording opens whether or not the person read the message.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection is a setting in Apple’s Mail app on iPhone, iPad and Mac. When it is on, Mail fetches the remote images in incoming messages in advance, through Apple’s own servers, and hides the reader’s IP address. Because open tracking works by counting requests for an invisible image, every such message is recorded as opened, at a time and from a location that have nothing to do with the reader.
It matters because Apple Mail is common among the executives and owners that B2B teams write to, so a share of any campaign’s opens can be generated by Apple’s servers rather than by people. The open rate goes up and stops meaning anything. Teams who compare subject lines by opens, or who follow up “because they opened it twice”, are reacting to machines. The practical response is to move your attention to signals that a pre-fetch cannot fake: replies, clicks on a link in the body, proposal visits and reading time, and engagement across several people at the same company.
In Seegnals open rates are shown with a note about Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflating them, and opens are tracked only when you have verified a custom tracking domain. The stats separate Opened from Clicked and Replied, so you can steer by the ones that still mean something.