(sidebar: I'm writing this post 8pm ET and there might be typos and I might not make sense sorry in advanced!)

I'm having way too much fun with this. Today (or yesterday if you're reading this on June 8) is a ... moment. Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection is coming to iOS 15. Mail Privacy Protection allows users to opt out of tracking so ESPs can't see opens, IP addresses, or location.

THIS IS THE BIGGEST "IT DEPENDS" SITUATION I'VE SEEN YET!

Coming to you live from the day the open rate died.

Is Stephanie one of my favorite email marketers? Yes. And she's been on fire all day coming in with great insight and actionable tips for moving forward. If you're not following her, go. Now. I'll wait.

Ok, cool. Welcome back. onto my next thing...

How should organizations that don't generate revenue deal with this impending change?

So one, take a deep, cleansing breathe. We're email marketers. We are made to deal with the unexpected. We create amazing campaigns with nearly no budget and can even wrangle Outlook to do our bidding. We are going to be okay. The pivot is what we're good at! This is the type of challenge we finud exciting (right...right!?)

Copywriters, its your time to shine! Now's a great time to check out your content strategy. If you relied on kitschy subject lines but have neglected your copy and email design, start testing it. What use is a supposed 30% open rate if your click-through is low? Are those people really interested or did your subject line mislead them into opening? It's worth thinking about.

We should really think about what our goals are for these non-revenue generating emails. If your answer is I don't know, then it's time to figure it out! If you have an idea but want to bounce it off someone, reach out and we can chat. If I don't know, I'm sure someone else does!

What should we measure instead?

Again, end goals. I think we're going to be relying on web analytics (while those are still around!) a bit more to see what pages get the most views and time spent on site. Click-to-Open Rate will hopefully still be useful, but I'm honestly not sure (If you've got this one figured out, lmk) if we'll still be able to calculate it if we don't have open numbers. I'm sure I'll be mulling over how to best figure out who's engaging with my emails without killing the entire list (that would suck!)

Sorry I don't have all the answers right now. I'd probably leave this email and head back to Twitter, where the fun arguments are happening. But seriously y'all, we're gonna be okay.

Signing off on this madness,

Megan