If you haven’t seen by now, Apple is currently releasing their next big software update, iOS 18. The update became available on September 16, 2024, and includes a myriad of enhancements and updates to everyone’s favorite Apple products.
NB: This is an article from gcommerce
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Apple boasts that this major update brings in new ways to personalize your iPhone with deeper customizations to the Home Screen, Control Center, and more. The Photos app has been completely redesigned, and soon there will be additional features added to Messages and Mail.
However, the biggest impact to digital marketers comes with the newly introduced Apple Intelligence, set to release in October and November 2024. This personal intelligence system utilizes the power of generative AI models and personal context to provide greater value to iPhone users while also protecting privacy and security.
How will iOS 18 impact digital marketing?
Let’s get down to it–what is Apple Intelligence exactly and how does it impact marketers? In a nutshell, Apple Intelligence is marketed as AI for the rest of us. Through a series of iPhone enhancements, Apple is putting the power of generative AI at our fingertips with easy-to-use integrations such as writing tools, message and email reminders, image editors and creators, updated abilities for Siri, and more privacy protection. While these tools are all exciting and should offer more value and control to the iPhone user, it’s the email updates, in particular that will affect digital marketing moving forward.
Set to release later this fall, Apple Mail will begin doing a couple of things:
- Removing customized preview text and replacing it with random snippets from the email body. Email marketers will have no control over what text populates in the preview text for any email opened in Apple Mail. Early testing that we’ve seen shows that preview text often has absolutely nothing to do with email content and does nothing but confuse the user.
Image Source: Jay Schwedelson at SubjectLine.com
- Utilize AI to filter all emails into four new categories: Primary, Updates, Promotions, and Transactions. For an email marketer, the Promotions category will essentially be the kiss of death when it comes to open rates and viewability, as your email will be swimming in a sea filled with other promotional materials. Instead, we want to focus on getting our emails into the Primary and Updates inboxes.
