Email Marketing in the iOS18 Era: What You Need to Know
Apple’s new iOS18 release in December 2024 came with major changes to the Apple Mail inbox. These include mail categories, AI summaries, branded mail and digest view. Each new feature brings new opportunities and challenges for email marketers to stand out in subscriber inboxes.
As adoption rate among Apple Mail users increases and the true impact of the update develops, brands should proactively look at positioning their 2025 email strategy with these updates in mind to stay ahead of competition and set a foundation for success.
iOS18: What’s New + Initial Email Impact
- Mail Categories: Emails will automatically be sorted into four categories:
- Primary
- Transactions
- Updates
- Promotions
Users can also manually categorize emails from senders so future messages will appear within that category. Similar to tabs displayed within Gmail, categories will help users sort their emails more efficiently and declutter inboxes. The majority of email marketers will face the challenge of standing out in the “promotions” tab and ensuring subscribers are actively engaged with messages to reduce impact on open rates and deliverability.
- AI Summary: By default, AI-generated summaries will replace existing preheaders in subscriber inboxes. Now only the subject line and summary will be displayed to entice subscribers to open. Image-based emails, rather than those that utilize live text, will not have summaries to display in the inbox. This feature presents the potential to lower open rates, as subscribers can scan the email summaries to gather the email’s content quickly, all without the need to open.
- Branded Mail: Similar to BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), brands have the ability to add a logo and name to their email domain and subdomain addresses. This helps brands build their brand identity, increase trust when communicating with customers within the inbox, and make their emails stand out within crowded Apple Mail inboxes. Apple’s email authentication is free and does not require a brand trademark.
- Digest View: Within the Transactions, Updates and Promotions categories, Apple Mail groups all messages from a single sender into a unified condensed view. A preview of the clicked-on email is displayed, along with a summary snippet of previous emails. This has the potential to reduce individual email open rates, as subscribers may scan through the collection of emails instead of opening each one separately.
Ways To Prepare Your Email Marketing For Success
- Create Engaging and Concise Subject Lines – Capturing subscribers’ attention with a compelling subject line is now even more crucial to stand out within message categories and encourage opens in the Digest View. Marketers will need to focus on creating highly relevant, timely and engaging subject lines without relying on carefully crafted preheader text to communicate the content of the message.
- Confirm Email Domain Authentication – As more inbox providers prioritize security, ensuring the setup of SPF and DKIM and publishing DMARC policies to the domain’s DNS record is essential. This improves email deliverability and sender reputation, ultimately helping messages land in the desired Apple Mail category. Domains also need to be DMARC and Apple Business Connect verified in order to implement Branded Mail, which increases trustworthiness and recognition of brands within subscriber inboxes.
- Deepen Focus on Content – With Apple’s AI Summaries generated based on email content, it is important to deliver valuable information clearly within the first few lines of content. A greater focus on well-structured, concise and relevant content will ensure accurate and relevant summaries that capture subscriber attention in the summary view.
- Utilize Live Text in Email – In order for Apple’s algorithm to properly summarize and categorize emails, avoid fully image-based messages. Instead utilize email designs with live text of the critical content, as well as imagery.
- Optimize With Personalization and Segmentation – Marketers must prioritize creating a customer-centric email program strategy which keeps subscribers engaged and anticipating their messages regardless of which category they are delivered. Deploying highly targeted emails based on subscriber interests and data can help ensure that the content is more likely to resonate with each individual and maximize the chances of delivering in the Primary category or stand out in the Promotions tab.
- Establish a New Baseline and Benchmarks – Over the next few months, determine how the update is impacting your open rates to enable future decisions for communications and re-align your email reporting. While analysis of subscriber engagement with Gmail’s tabs functionality showed users continued engaging with brands at the same rate they previously engaged with (Return Path), brands with less-engaged subscribers could see decreases in engagement. Adjusting expectations and benchmarks will allow the ability to continue to test subject lines, times of day, etc., without skewed results.
This is not an advertisement, and solely reflects the views and opinions of the author. This website and its commentaries are not designed to provide legal or other advice and you should not take, or refrain from taking, action based on its content. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, neither 9Rooftops nor the author is involved in, or responsible for, the marketing or promotional efforts of the individuals or entities discussed.
