Emarsys plan

We are conducting research into whether STO algorithms should be updated, and if so, then how. We will monitor changes in our data as soon as the new OS versions are released, we will then be able to compare OS masked opens with user generated opens and learn of the accurate affect.

What should you do?

Currently no action is required.

The expected impact of iOS 15 on STO broken down by contact group types:

• Not using Apple Mail:
  • No impact.
• Using Apple Mail, contacts with long history:
  • In the short term STO should work as before.
  • Over time, the uplift might deteriorate (how quickly and how much will very much depend on the behavior characteristics of each contact but expect it to happen between 3 to 9 months).
• Using Apple Mail, relatively new contacts:
  • STO won't be able to find the optimal sending time.
  • We don't expect STO to perform worse than sending at random times.
  • It might be worse, however, than sending at a good sending time (e.g. 9 AM) for everyone.

Emarsys plan

We began research to find a way to keep good model performance without opens as main features/target in our models.

What should you do?

While you do not need to change the use of your AI segments, you should review behavior segments that rely on opens. e.g. opened in the last 180 days and potentially change them or stop relying on their accuracy.

We will communicate any further advice as soon as we reach conclusions post iOS 15 rollout.

Emarsys plan

We will investigate if clicks can be given more weight in calculations or if other data sources can be used to detect location.  

What should you do?

You should be aware of the following and take it into account:

Less contacts can be “geo-segmented” – this is due to the user IP address that will no longer be detectable. This is already true for all Gmail users for several years.

Contacts using the privacy features can have inaccurate locations – based on the beta version of iOS 15, we see that the locations are based on Apple servers rather than the recipient true location.

Contacts who do not use the new privacy features will not be affected – those that will not opt-in to it and those that do not use Apple Mail. Recipients who do not normally engage further than the open (e.g. click) will be affected more.

Emarsys plan

We began research to find out the impact on our calculation services and reporting products.

What should you do?

If you set your attribution service to e-mail opens, we advise you to monitor your revenue data on our platform and if you see significant differences, consider reverting to click-based attribution.

The engagement metrics (opens) on Strategic Dashboard will be impacted, too, the size of the impact will depend on the device usage statistics of your customer base. We suggest relying more on click data.

In case of custom reports, please reach out to our custom reporting team to discuss the impact, as the reports are covering very different use cases.

We will communicate any further advice as soon as we reach conclusions post iOS 15 roll out.

Emarsys plan

We are introducing iOS 15 compliant updates into the Push UI - Interruption Levels and Relevance Score. This will allow you to configure the notification level on the campaign set up level.

What should you do?

Notification summary

To reduce distraction, notification summary collects notifications together for delivery on specific time, groups them and arranges them by priority.

As a marketer, you have limited influence on how and when the notification summary will be delivered on the device. The priority is calculated locally. However, you can set up a relevance score in order to indicate to the system, which of your apps notifications should be displayed prominently in this summary. Use a value between 0 and 1 to sort the notifications from your app. The highest score gets featured in the notification summary.

Always set a notification level and make sure it appropriate for the campaign. The notification level Active is the most similar to prior behavior. If customers set the notification level to Critical for campaigns that are not appropriate, the end user will likely disable push permissions.

Apple adopted four new notification interruption levels, a direction indicated previously with the critical notification option introduced with iOS 14.

There are four distinct interruption levels that are supported:

• Passive
• Active
• Time Sensitive
• Critical

You will find this setting under Mobile Engage Push Message > Content Creation > Platform settings. For more information on the interruption levels, see the Apple Developer Documentation.

Emarsys plan

There is no adjustment needed in the platform.

What should you do?

There is a new way to build location-based features that more seamlessly blend in with your app's experience, while allowing people to choose when they share location. You can now add a Share Current Location button right into your app's experience. When people tap on it, your app will receive access to their location for that session. It is convenient for the end user and builds trust on what data is being shared.

Emarsys plan

Research the possibility to generalize the "wait for event" functionality known for Interactions.

What should you do?

Follow-up the expected action, rather than only monitoring whether the contact opened your message. What was your email goal? To encourage conversion with an abandoned cart email? To ask for a review? To increase loyalty? Check whether the desired behavior happened, monitoring more reliable metrics.

Emarsys plan

We are working on a new server-to-server tracking solution that will allow tracking without the use of cookies.

What should you do?

For a number of years, Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention has helped protect Safari users from unwanted tracking by using on-device machine learning to stop trackers while allowing websites to function normally. This year, Intelligent Tracking Prevention is getting even stricter by also hiding the users' IP address from trackers. On top of this, Private Relay is a new internet privacy service that is built right into iCloud as an additional paid feature, allowing users to connect to and browse the web in a more secure and private way. When browsing with Safari, Private Relay ensures all traffic leaving a users device is encrypted, so no one between the user and the website they are visiting can access and read it. There is nothing to do now, but we do encourage you to incentivize your users to stay logged in when visiting your site so you can continue to identify them without having to rely on cookies.