How Apple's new email privacy measures affects writers
How Apple's new email privacy measures affects writers
Email remains the best way to reach your readers.
Earlier this month, Apple announced a slew of significant online privacy features they’re planning to add to iOS. One in particular has caught the attention of writers and journalists who maintain newsletters and mailing lists to reach their audience. The reactions range from fretting to annoyed grunts to, ah…outrage.
The cause? It stems from a single innocuous paragraph in Apple’s marketing announcement:
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.
What does this mean?
When sending a message, it’s often useful to know when (and if!) the receiver has read the message. For example, if you use Apple’s iMessage to send text messages, you may notice a small label appearing under your message’s bubble saying Delivered or Read.
Internet email wasn’t designed with this feature, at least not in its humble beginnings. To work around this, it’s common for digital marketing and newsletters to insert an invisible one-pixel image into the email that’s loaded from the sender’s web server. This “tracking pixel” can be used to detect when a recipient has viewed the email, much like iMessage telling you your SMS is Read.
What Apple plans to do is prevent its Mail application from loading the pixel.
Are tracking pixels an invasion of privacy? Arguably so. There’s been an animus against them for two decades now. Isn’t this a good thing?
Well, not to the people who maintain email newsletters. Some of those people work for rather large corporations, including the one maintaining this site, Substack.
But some of those people are independent writers, journalists, and creative artists, like me. That’s where the trouble lies.
Alas, tracking pixel, I knew him
I maintain a separate newsletter to inform my readers of sales, free books, and new novels from yours truly. (You can sign up here.) When I send out a newsletter, the mailing list service I use can tell me how many of my subscribers opened the email, how many clicked a link within the email, which links were clicked, what time the email was opened, and so on.
What voyeuristic thrill do I get out of this rich trove of information?
Personally, very little. The big number for me is what percentage of my subscribers open any particular email. That gives me feedback if my occasional messages to them are appreciated. For example, I’ve learned not to send too many emails—once a month is a good number. I’ve also learned to keep my emails short and sweet. And, there are people on my mailing list who simply don’t read my newsletter, probably deleting the emails as soon as they show up in their inbox. [Insert shrug emoji here.]
There’s a lesser-known reason why independent writers are worried about this change. Mailing list services make their money by offering free accounts for folks with small subscriber numbers (say, 1,000 subscribers or less). Once you’ve swelled beyond that number, you have to pay a monthly fee.
Well, if you have 990 subscribers and the tracking pixel tells you 100 of them haven’t read your emails in over a year, it makes financial sense to cull the list to avoid that fee. Without tracking, there’s more guesswork.
This is why authors are freaking out about Apple’s announcement. It affects their pocketbook as well as their ability to communicate with their readers.
And this announcement may merely be a harbinger. Remember, Apple is a market leader, and has been for decades now. If Apple does it, you can bet Google and other companies will follow shortly. It’s entirely possible pixel tracking will be dead within a year.
Why this isn’t a true privacy win
Let’s at least recognize that Apple is not creating a true shield for your online presence. Like the old TV show Outer Limits, they have control of your vertical and your horizontal. Every iMessage you send and receive is delivered through their servers. If you store data in iCloud, they have access to that information too. And, some of the new privacy enhancements Apple is touting are paid-only features.
It’s well-known that Google, Twitter, and Facebook, are in the advertising business. It’s less understood that Apple is too. Almost anyone who distributes content is in the ad business, and Apple is most definitely a content producer.
(More after the jump…)
As pointed out at The Verge:
One of my more cynical friends views all this as a way to funnel more businesses to building apps, offering in-app purchases, and promoting them with Apple’s advertising products. Marketing emails not working as well as they used to? Sounds like it’s time to buy some keywords in the App Store!
Technologies like email and web offer a way to communicate with readers that sidestep Apple’s “walled garden” software ecosystem. If their privacy initiatives force content platforms to create Apple Store software with in-app purchases, the company now has new revenue streams. There’s a reason Substack doesn’t offer an app in the Apple Store. They might have to now, though.
As Matt Taylor puts it, “Apple’s fight for privacy is really a fight against the web. … Apple are not really fighting for their users so much as they are fighting against email.” Don’t be surprised if Apple announces later this year a Substack-like newsletter platform that delivers paid content via their app rather than email.
And, lest you think Apple commands a small share of email compared to say, Google, look again: iPhone and Apple Mail account for 60% of read mail last month, compared to Gmail’s 18.6%. Why? Probably because iPhone users don’t install other mail apps, even if they have Gmail accounts. Apple’s Mail app is good enough.
So, tracking email opens does look to soon be a thing of the past. (I’m actually surprised tracking pixels have lasted as long as they have.)
Note that readers clicking links in emails can still be tracked, but I suspect Apple is already devising how to mitigate this as as well.
The reason independent writers are panicking is that, unlike Apple and Facebook, they’re not huge corporations raking in billions, all while making 1984 look like a quaint novel of easy living. Blocking pixel tracking is about Apple trading body blows with other big boys—corporations like Substack—who now have to rethink their long-term strategies. Us small-fry are just collateral damage. Apple gets to make independent writers’ lives more difficult while virtue signaling they’re promoting a better Internet.
With all that said, let’s face it: None of this is an argument in favor of email tracking pixels. It’s worth asking if, in the balance, overall privacy is enhanced by Apple’s change. I’m pessimistic.
So long, and thanks for all the clicks
My advice is: Don’t panic.
The inimitable David Gaughran writes about this development and concludes:
Email marketing will still be the most powerful tool at your disposal. It's just going to get harder to monitor your performance in key areas—so now is the time to address any shortcomings you may have. Because you are going to be flying somewhat blind soon.
In other words, if you were deciding between a variety of things to pursue on the marketing side, bump email-related activities up the list.
I agree. You should be building your mailing list now. I would have offered that advice to any writer who asked me a day, a month, or a year ago. I stand by it today.
The biggest mistake I made six years ago was not focusing harder on building my mailing list. I put a small link on my web site, offered a free book for sign-ups, and watched my subscriber list grow at a snail’s pace. Building a mailing list is not a passive activity. You have to be proactive.
Look into services that will help you grow your newsletter list. BookFunnel, MyBookCave, StoryOrigin, and Prolific Works all offer ways to add readers to your subscriber list, and at different price points. Generally, building your list involves offering a free e-book in exchange for an email address. You can be creative, though, like offering the first three chapters of your novel, or a prequel novella that introduces your characters.
Start a cadence of putting out newsletters to your readers. As mentioned, once a month is a good schedule. If you’re just getting started and have few books to offer, once every two or three months will work.
Make your newsletters worthy reads. I like to stick to business, with quick notes and links to sales: Short and sweet. Other writers will keep their readers up-to-date on the progress of the next novel, or personal notes about their own lives. Suss out what your readers want and don’t want. Make your newsletter your own.
Don’t fret about unsubscribes. Some people will sign up, download their free book, and unsubscribe. Whatever. What’s important is the direction your subscriber totals are going: Up.
After all, email newsletters remain your best way to directly reach your readers. Why?
If a reader has given you their email address, you have a connection—however slight—to a reader interested in your work. There’s nothing wrong with dropping a line now to remind them of your great writing.
Stopping tracking pixels does not block that connection to your readers. It just makes managing that connection a bit more difficult.