Apple Mail Privacy Protection preloads tracking pixels whether or not anyone opens an email, inflating open rates by 15 to 20 points and making them close to meaningless. The metrics that survived are click-to-open, conversions and revenue per send.
The Take: Open rate stopped being a metric the day Apple started opening emails on people's behalf. If your email report still leads with opens, you are reporting a number a proxy server generates, not a sign that anyone read you. Measure what happens after the open instead.
The numbers: Apple Mail Privacy Protection routes messages through Apple servers that preload images, including the tracking pixel, whether or not the recipient ever opens the email. Marketers saw open rates jump 10 to 30 points overnight when it rolled out, and the inflation has not gone away. Only about 15% of marketers still treat open rate as a primary metric. The rest have worked out that a proxy loading an image is not the same as a person reading a message.
How much Apple Mail Privacy Protection can inflate a reported email open rate
The mechanics: A machine that opens every email makes your open rate look healthy while telling you nothing. Read that again. The number climbed because Apple preloaded a pixel, not because your subject line worked, so any A/B test decided on opens is now a coin toss dressed as data. Worse, re-engagement flows that trigger off opens now misread a dead list as an active one, so you keep mailing people who left months ago.
Reality check: The metrics that survived the change are the ones tied to action. Click-to-open rate, which is clicks divided by genuine opens, is a cleaner read on whether the email earned attention. A good click-to-open for an Australian ecommerce brand sits around 15 to 25%. Below that sit the only numbers that pay the bills, conversions and revenue per email. Those are the figures that move when the email actually works and the ones a proxy server cannot fake for you.
For Australian operators: