Another day, another huge Apple iOS update causing panic and confusion in the email marketing community. But before we abandon our email marketing lists and evacuate the inbox, let’s take a moment to understand what this means for your email marketing campaigns. I mean, as email marketers, we have all survived numerous extinction events before and emerged stronger. How bad can the threat of iOS 18 really be?
What is the iOS 18 Update All About?
Any update from Apple is big news. But let’s keep this short. According to Apple’s PR team, iOS 18 is a significant update to the Apple operating system. It offers users more customization options, the most extensive redesign of the Photos app, the opportunity to send messages over satellite, and new ways for users to manage their inbox in Mail.
Apple Intelligence
At the heart of the iOS 18 update is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system called Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence blends the capabilities of generative models with personalized data to provide beneficial and relevant insights. Designed with privacy as its core, Apple Intelligence is seamlessly integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.
How Will iOS 18 Impact Email Marketers?
iOS 18 is going all-in on utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to sort and summarise emails landing in users’ inboxes. The two most significant changes impacting email marketers are inbox categorization and inbox summarization.
Inbox Categorization
With iOS 18, Apple is introducing advanced inbox categorization powered by on-device AI to automatically sort emails into different categories, including Primary (for personal and time-sensitive emails), Promotions (targeting marketing emails, offers, and deals), and Transactions (including receipts and confirmations). This system is designed to help users manage their inboxes more efficiently by ensuring that important emails are front and center. In contrast, less critical emails, including marketing communications, are directed to the Promotions tab.
For email marketers, this change could impact campaign visibility. It is similar to how Gmail’s tabbed inbox operates, where emails are sent to the Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates tabs. This reduces the likelihood that users will see promotional content immediately, as many only check the Primary tab for personal emails.
Inbox Summarization
With iOS 18, the Apple Mail app is set to introduce a new email digest view feature, which will group multiple emails from the same sender into a single, summarized view. This feature, designed to declutter inboxes, has the potential to significantly improve user experience.
While this update can help users stay more organized and avoid being overwhelmed by cluttered inboxes, it presents a potential challenge for email marketers. With multiple emails grouped together, users may be less inclined to open individual messages, especially if they don’t immediately appear relevant or compelling.
If emails from the same sender aren’t sufficiently differentiated or engaging, they run the risk of being overlooked or ignored when bundled into a digest. For marketers, this emphasizes the importance of creating highly relevant and engaging content.
How Email Marketers Should React to iOS 18
With Apple’s iPhone having a more than 60% market share of the US smartphone market, it’s fair to say iOS 18 will run on a large number of your email subscribers’ devices. Therefore, you really can’t afford to ignore this update. It’s time to adapt and thrive in this new environment.
But it’s not all bad news.
With this change, Apple is not trying to kill off email. Instead, it’s investing in its future and showcasing just how valuable email continues to be in the modern digital world.
Email Marketing Best Practices
Essentially, iOS 18 will force email marketers to become better marketers. This means focusing on all those best practices we’ve been shouting about for years. If you need a reminder of what those best practices are and why they are so important, consider the following statement:
With AI sorting emails, personalization is more important than ever. The better you understand your subscribers and tailor your content to their needs and interests, the more likely your emails are to be seen and engaged with. Email marketers must focus on creating highly personalized, high-quality content that stands out from the competition and avoids being overlooked in the Promotions tab.
Email Marketing is Evolving; Don’t Get Left Behind
While email marketing is perhaps the most established digital marketing technology available to marketers, it’s no dinosaur. With the constant investments in change from industry leaders like Apple and Alphabet (Google), it has moved with the times and continues to be the apex predator in the digital marketing ecosystem.
In fact, with advances like AI impacting every aspect of online marketing, including search and SEO, email marketing is considered by many as more important than ever.
Learn More
To learn more about how the email marketing experts at emfluence can help you stay ahead of the curve and ensure your email campaigns stay highly relevant and remain visible on Apple iOS 18 devices and all other inbox environments, contact us today via expert@emfluence.com.
