• by Ray Schultz , October 17, 2022

Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) isn’t winning any popularity contests with Apple Mail users. 

Contrary to what you may have heard, Apple now has a 69% inbox rate, a 17% spam rate and a 14% missing rate, according to What the heck is Mail Privacy protection The Impacts of MPP—One Year Later.

In contrast, Yahoo has an 85% inbox rate, with Hotmail at 80%,  Gmail at87% and AOL at 85%. 

“Remember that MPP is an Apple Mail feature, not a mailbox provider-specific feature, and there are significant differences in adoption across mailbox providers,” Validity notes. “Apple domains like icloud.com, me.com, and mac.com show the highest adoption, while for Gmail and Outlook it’s much lower.”

Why? “This could be a demographics issue (Gmail users are generally younger than Yahoo Mail users). Or, could be related to technology (Microsoft and Gmail offer features that make it unnecessary to set up a mailbox with a third- party application like Apple Mail). 

It therefore makes sense that iCloud mailboxes see higher rates of MPP adoption. They are more likely to be iPhone users, which makes them more likely to be Apple Mail users, and therefore more likely to have MPP enabled. This all means we expect MPP to be overrepresented among iCloud users. 

What should marketers do next?

Redefine engagement. In the post-MPP world, emails to Apple Mail clients almost always generate a pixel fire,” Validity notes. “So, these users give the impression of being active and engaged— even when they aren’t. 

Marketers should also validate their lists, establish a re-engagement series and make unsubscribing simple.