Open tracking is less reliable under Apple MPP. Focus on what matters: clicks, replies, and customer actions that prove the email was read.
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) has been with us since iOS 15, but it keeps becoming more important. The simple reason is reach. Apple still accounts for a huge share of email opens, and Litmus says that over half of email opens now happen on a device with MPP activated. That is big enough to change what ‘normal’ looks like for almost every B2B email campaign.
In Apple’s own wording, ‘Protect Mail Activity’ hides a recipient’s IP address and downloads remote content privately in the background when the message is received, rather than when it is viewed. That includes images, and therefore includes the tiny tracking pixel most platforms use to count an ‘open’. Apple also says it prevents senders from seeing if and when an email was opened. In other words, the classic open rate becomes unreliable by design.
No humans necessary
If a platform counts an open when the tracking pixel loads, and Apple preloads that pixel automatically, then the tool can register an ‘open’ even if the human never looked at the email. Mailchimp spells this out bluntly: with MPP enabled, emails can be reported as opened regardless of the contact’s activity, which inflates open rates and removes things like reliable location data.
In B2B, we used to treat opens as a lightweight signal for “interest”. MPP means anything built on opens becomes shakier.
So what do we do instead?
We shift from “did they open?” to “did they do anything that suggests intent?” Clicks are the obvious one. They are still imperfect, but at least they are a deliberate action. The discipline now is to decide upfront what outcome we want and what signals will prove it. That takes more work.
However, if open rates become less useful, we’ll stop optimising for the illusion of engagement. We’ll write emails that earn the next step.