Dynamic content automation with Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) was launched in September 2021 as part of Apple’s larger initiative to give users more control over their data. Users are now prompted to decide whether or not they would like to protect their email engagement activity and IP address when using the Apple Mail email client. 

How dynamic content automation works with MPP

For subscribers opted into MPP, Apple automatically caches images upon open. That makes it a challenge to track accurate opens since email tracking pixels are image-based. MPP can also cache images before they're opened by the user so we can see "zombie" hits for someone who never views an email.

When it comes to Content Automation or serving dynamic content, feeds may change even though an image has been previously cached and could result in a subscriber being shown one image but being directed to another when clicking through.

Our solution adds two MPP management parameters within your content automation tags. These are the subscriber ID kdcustomerid and mailing ID kdsendid. Our system will cross reference the combination of these two parameters for each open to determine when to serve up dynamic content.

This means that a subscriber who uses Apple MPP infrequently will still receive the experience of dynamic content whenever they aren’t using an MPP-impacted email client like Gmail. 

Our solution will also ensure that if a subscriber sees a cached image, they’re presented with that same image experience when they click through. This process eliminates the need to create fallback content unless you’re using live email widgets which are time-bound and/or location-bound in your email as well. 

When to create fallback content

There are still some scenarios where you will need to create fallback content for MPP. Whenever you’re creating a tag that contains Live Email Content widgets (time or location-bound content), you should create fallback rules for MPP. Some examples include: 

• Countdown timers
• Timed images
• Weather-based rules
• Nearest store