Apple’s release of iOS 18.2 has introduced some big changes in Apple Mail, including AI-generated summaries and mailbox categories. Apple Mail maintains over a 50%+ market share in email clients, and understanding the changes is critical in how your emails are seen and actioned on by your current and prospective customers.
Check out our recommendations below on how to adapt to key iOS 18.2 changes.
AI-Generated Summaries
Historically, introducing pre-header text provided marketers with an opportunity to encourage users to open emails. Apple’s latest update introduces AI-generated summaries, replacing the preheader with Apple Intelligence’s email summary based on key highlights from the email that can differ for each user based on past interactions and engagement habits.
How to Adapt
Ensure your email body, content, and structure is clear and compelling. Apple Intelligence will be deriving its summary from your entire email. Having an actionable purpose with high-quality content will help Apple’s algorithm derive a summary that will encourage users to engage with your content.
Continue to use pre-header text. While Apple Mail has a commanding market share, other email clients still showcase preheader text. It’s also unclear how Apple’s algorithms will prioritize pre-header text; however, it is still used as an input into the AI-generated summary.
Don’t forget about alt text for images. Apple’s AI will scan the entire email, and while it can not derive insights from the image itself, it can read the context of the image via descriptive alt text. Making sure your emails have concise alt text for visuals can impact Apple’s summary which in turn can impact user engagement with your content.
Mailbox Categories
Inbox categorization is enabled as a default setting – this means Apple Mail will automatically categorize emails into the below categories:
Primary: Personal messages and time sensitive information.
Transactions: Purchases, confirmations, receipts, shipping notices.
Updates: News, newsletters, social updates.
Promotions: Coupons and sales emails.
By design, recipients have the most control over placement. They’ll be able to reorganize their messages from senders into different categories; however, by default, your marketing emails will likely be delivered to the Promotions tab in Apple Mail. This will mean even more competition for your customer’s time as messages across the various brands they interact with will all land in the same inbox folder. Moreover, Apple Mail can also group together all messages from a sender in a summarized Digest view.
How to Adapt
Ensure your subject lines are engaging and compelling enough to stand out in an increasingly crowded inbox to encourage users to open content and click through to learn more.
Worried about if subject line length will impact performance? Check out our article here on why subject line length doesn’t matter.
Be mindful of your content calendar - sending batch emails to users frequently may lead to grouping and less overall engagement.
Segment and personalize your email content based on your customer’s interactions and preferences, ensuring that content remains relevant and engaging.
Leverage Branded Mail to prominently display your brand name and logo to help make your brand stand out in the Mail App.
For triggers, consider leveraging dynamic fields (e.g., product name, consumer name) to break up repetitive messaging.
Monitor your triggers for performance fatigue more frequently: conduct frequent testing and cycle in new content when needed.
Persado’s customers are responding by increasing the frequency of A/B testing using Motivation AI to refresh and test content. Persado’s new Dynamic Email capabilities enable you to do more A/B testing without the additional effort and at the same time allow you to rotate your highest performing subject lines. This ensures the grouping of content per user does not negatively influence your performance.
Reach out to your Persado account team for more information on our latest capabilities in email.