People who work with emails need to get ready for the next round of iOS updates. The good news is that iOS 18 won’t be out until mid- to late-September like it has in the past; however, the changes that will affect Apple Mail aren’t yet available in beta. Most likely, this means they won’t be in the first update.
Do not believe what I say. The changes were teased by Apple as “coming later this year.” This makes it more possible that they’ll be released separately and at a later date.
What’s so great about that? Because it’s about to make big changes to Apple Mail inboxes, which, according to a new Litmus study, handle almost half of all email traffic in the world. The people who sell emails will need some time to fully understand how to get ready.
What iOS 18 will do to Apple Mail
Let’s start with AI, which is the smaller of the two types of change. You don’t need to wonder anymore about when AI would be more important in Apple Mail, which works with many big email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. Some of the new AI-made features in iOS 18 are automatic reply ideas and email summaries.
One thing to keep an eye on is whether these automatic answers include language that asks to be unsubscribed. A bigger worry right now is that email recaps made by AI will take the place of preheaders, which are used by marketers to explain the message and get people to open the email.
This might not be a big deal if your emails already follow best practices (I’ll talk about those in a moment), but if they don’t, AI might not read your emails correctly, which could lead to bad reports.
With iOS 18, the most annoying change to email is the addition of tabs. People who use desktop email are already used to them, so we can guess how they will affect mobile. Apple Mail will sort emails into groups instead of showing them all in one view.
- Primary.
- Transactions.
- Updates.
- Promotions.
We haven’t seen this in beta yet, and because iOS 15 made it hard to measure open rates, we won’t know how this changes them. I am sure, though, that this will cause a clear drop in both click rates (which we will be able to track) and open rates.
Users are less likely to see and interact with emails that are in the non-Primary tab if there are more of them. Email marketers should have a plan for keeping the Primary tab as full of information as possible.
Tips on how to get ready for iOS 18
Let’s go back to the changes made by AI. Email summaries will only use content that AI can understand, so it’s important to make sure your email content is written correctly. That’s why you need to put these things first:
- If you send emails with pictures, make sure they have dynamic live text added. You should do this whether the email is for iOS or not.
- If you want to change the email summary, pay more attention to the code in the main text blocks. Coding mistakes could lead to AI results that don’t make sense.
- Basically, make sure that anything you would have put in the pre-header is ready for AI to use.
Now, let’s talk about tabs. What are the best ways to keep your emails in the main view? Top-level, the more involved you are, the more likely it is that you’ll stay in the spotlight.
Strategic segmentation into high-engagers, medium-engagers, an at-risk group, and non-engagers is the best way to get people to really care about what you have to say. The messages and frequency should be different for each section.
Another important thing is to make sure the emails are very interesting. Relevant, non-promotional messages is a great tool that fits in well with iOS’s goal of earning users’ trust and giving them something of value. This should be enough to make you want to stop sending me more advertising emails.
Once iOS 18 goes live in beta, we’ll know more. As we learn more, we’ll share more steps for getting ready. For now, follow the suggestions above and stay in touch with reliable people who can help you figure out the best way to move forward.
