by Zoe Fisher 
When Apple released its Mail Privacy Protection features in 2021, it allowed its Users to hide their email engagement activity from senders. From an email marketing perspective, this has made it challenging to be able to accurately measure email engagement and success. Read on to find out how Pardot is supporting with preparing us for this shift.
Open Rules Audit
The Spring’22 Release has brought Pardot’s response to the Apple Mail Privacy Protection changes. It provides users with an Open Rules Audit to review where automation is based on an email open in your account. Here’s how to access this:
In Pardot Lightning, go to Pardot Reports > Marketing Assets > Automations > Open Rules Audit
In Pardot Classic, go to Reports > Marketing Assets > Automations > Open Rules Audit
Overview
The Overview gives you a top-level view of where Email Open triggers have been found in Engagement Programs, Dynamic Lists and Automation Rules.
Engagement Studio Programs
Below the overview, you can find more details on the Engagement Studio Programs, including how many open triggers there are and if the program is scheduled, running, not started yet or paused.
Click on the name of the program to go through to the program builder and edit your trigger steps.
Dynamic Lists
The lists that are based on email opens will be displayed here for you to click into and edit.
This gives you the lists that are using the Prospect email opens criteria:
Automation Rules
This table displays any automation rules using the Prospect email opens criteria, and whether the rule is running or paused.
Click on the automation rule names to change the rule criteria.
Recommendations and Considerations
The reason for this audit is that Apple Mail Privacy will update a Prospect who receives an email to ‘Email Opened’, regardless of whether the Prospect actually opened the email or not. Consequently, this makes it very difficult to ascertain if a Prospect has engaged with your email.
Therefore, I recommend the following actions and considerations to email marketers using Pardot:
- Review your Open Rules Audit and edit the triggers, rules and lists to exclude this rule from any automations.
- Review in recent List Email Reports the % of Apple Mail Privacy Protection users there are in the Client Report. While we cannot narrow this down to specific Prospects, it will give you an idea of how big of an impact this change is for you.
- Consider not running A/B tests based on Email Opens, as this may no longer accurately show you the most successful subject line/pre-header text/sender for your emails.
Furthermore, read Pardot’s stance on Apple Mail Privacy Protection for more information. And if you have any other queries, get in touch with one of our Consultants.