Apple announced at WWDC their release of a new feature. Which will block spy pixels within their mail app.
In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.
Exciting!
I've been using the HEY email service. The same company that hosts this very blog. I wouldn't be surprised if they got inspiration from HEY. Considering the media storm around their issues in getting into the Apple app store. And Apple seeing the amount of love for the service.
Important to note that Apple is releasing it as an opt-in feature. It is not automatic. But users will receive a prompt which ideally most people with opt-in for no spying.
That aside, there are some who are afraid that this will hamper journalism distributed by email. This is likely a stretch. People read emails whether someone is able to "spy" on them reading it or not. And given that newspapers didn't crumble, because it didn't have spy trackers says a lot.
To be fair I understand the lure of spy pixels. I use Mailchimp and SendGrid for emailing marketing and transactional emails. And years ago (no longer) used email CRM services that embedded tracking. Over time I have found that they are not needed.
Generally speaking, if someone doesn't want an email from you, they unsubscribe. And if they want to keep hearing from you, they stay subscribed. Each email usually has a call to action. If you know how many people are subscribed to your email list. It's simple math to measure engagement by how many convert to the call to action and/or unsubscribe.
At present the argument for spy pixels is weak:
Collectively, the percentage of people that actually open emails is known as the open rate, and it’s one of the most important metrics that senders measure to gauge the effectiveness of what they’re doing. It gives you a sense of how engaged your audience is, and how that engagement is changing over time.
What good is someone reading your email all the time and never converting? Note converting could be any call to action. For example, subscribing to your paid email newsletter tier, or buying your soap. Invading people's privacy because of not wanting to do the work of market research is not a good excuse. And likely creates a lot of false positives.
I hope this trend continues in the removal of the inability to opt-out of unnecessary tracking. And that brands and companies focus on delivering true value and being rewarded because of this value. The only metric that counts is conversion to a metric that moves your company forward - like revenue.
P.S.
Note Apple and HEY block spy pixels when you open the email within their client aka app. If you click any image or link in the email - it WILL report your location and other metrics to the company.
So you are still exposing yourself to leaking your location and other data. Second, it is correct that they will not know how many times you've opened aka reading the email. However, the first time you click the link or image it registers to the company as the first time you opened the email.
So you could have opened the email for the first time on Sunday and didn't click anything in it. And return to the email on Wednesday. On Wednesday you clicked the link. Thus the spy pixel reports that the first time you opened the email was Wednesday. And will report your location and other data from Wednesday's activity.
I tested the above scenario with my HEY email account and Mailchimp.