As part of its iOS 15 release on Monday, Apple plans to eliminate developer access to sensitive user data, leaving email marketers with a quandary over how to calculate metrics. We chatted with Vivek Sharma, CEO of Movable Ink, a software business that lets marketers act on the data they collect, to learn more about how the industry is handling this issue. This discussion follows up on our August Extra Crunch post, which looked at how email marketers can prepare for Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection updates.
The ability to disguise your IP address as an Apple Mail subscriber is a game-changer for email marketers with this release.
How can marketers adjust their strategies to keep their metrics under control? Instead of the open rate, Sharma believes that a greater emphasis will be placed on downstream metrics such as clicks, conversions, and revenue. “That sounds nice and all, but you don’t have as much data. However, by definition, that funnel narrows; there are fewer individuals to reach at that stage, so it may take you longer to figure out whether anything is working or not.”
Businesses have been focusing on zero-party data, according to Sharma. “There are two halves to it: There’s an open metric, and there’s some of the data you’re getting at open time, such as your IP address, the time of day, and the weather forecast. Data leaking is defined as the disclosure of information such as an IP address, date, and time. These are only a few of the data points that will be unavailable to marketers. As a result, they’re relying on first- and zero-party data, which they’ve already invested in.”
According to Sharma, the difficulty is to figure out how to collect zero-party data in an engaging, aesthetically appealing fashion and then personalize its contents for each client at scale. The following is an example of how Movable Ink has acquired zero-party data:
“Everything in here is a polling question: ‘What do you generally shop for?’” Sharma explains. ‘Can you tell me your shoe size?’ They’re also rewarding you with loyalty points, so there’s a value exchange going on here. They’re gathering information about you in a transparent manner and providing you with a simple way to interact with the company you’re interested in.” The challenge is, what do you do with the data now that you have it? An example from JetBlue is shown below.
