Identify Anonymous Opens With Apple Machine Open Indicator

Email senders have come to rely on the value of rich tracking available when communicating via email, especially recipient open tracking. Senders then use open data to optimize their customer experiences. For example, personalizing with branching automations, changing sending patterns with thoughtful sunset policies, and measuring the engagement and ultimately the success of campaigns and notifications.

Now, however, the reliability of open tracking is at risk. The launch of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and increased adoption over the last 3 weeks has caused the email industry as a whole to experience inflation in anonymous open activity.

MPP prompts Apple Mail application users on the newest operating system to enhance their security by anonymizing their open engagement activity.

As a result, senders, regardless of their email service provider, are seeing an increase in random open events triggered by Apple machines and not receiving open events for actual human engagement for MPP-enabled users. 

Don’t fret, however. After significant research, testing, and monitoring, Twilio SendGrid can consistently identify this anonymous open data with our Apple Machine Open Indicator—now available from the SendGrid Event Webhook. The Apple Machine Open Indicator is a boolean field, “sg_machine_open,” included with all open events to identify MPP-enabled user opens. When the “sg_machine_open” boolean field is “true,” it will indicate that an Apple machine, not a human, triggered the open event anonymously.

With the Apple Machine Open Indicator, Twilio SendGrid empowers senders to identify anonymous data in order to parse it from real human engagement data. This gives senders the power to respect recipient privacy and adapt email sending strategies to rely less on open data for MPP-enabled users while continuing to harness the power of human email engagement data when available. 

For more recommendations for how to adapt to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, see our comprehensive guide and consider personalized guidance from our team of email experts.