I love Apple and the privacy they offer. My data is important and valuable to me. As marketers, we need to act responsibly with people’s personal information and data. If we explain in plain English how the data is used and how it can benefit consumers, we will get better buy-in to tracking and targeted ads.
At Apple’s Keynote for the WWDC, they have expanded their privacy to the world of email marketing. They came out with two different ways to protect consumers. The first is Mail Privacy Protection, where the Mail app on macOS blocks your IP (location) and if you opened the mail. The second is Hide My Email. This allows a person to give an email alias instead of their actual email.
Mail Privacy Protection will affect the way a lot of marketers conduct business. The ability to retarget emails will be more challenging for those using Apple Products. I have resent emails to those who didn’t open or emails to those most engaged with my email marketing. It will be interesting to see how marketers get around this or work with this.
I think it’s time we had an honest conversation about privacy and data in marketing. We need to explain how we use their data, why we use their data, and how it can help them. This information will allow them to make informed decisions on how we market products and services to them.