Apple just unleashed another shot across the bow to marketers still relying on email templates, heavily-designed HTML emails, and the general use of images in emails.
In the middle of the night, they released iOS 18.3, which comes with these features:
* Sticking promotion emails into their own tab instead of the primary inbox
* Blocking images from automatically loading
Now, both of these updates have been a long time coming. Gmail has been separating promo emails into its own tab for years. And nobody—and I truly mean nobody outside of the email marketing platforms (like Klaviyo, for example, who have literally convinced themselves that their ideal customer is so stupid that creating more “done-for-you” email templates is the only way to grow their business—don’t shoot the messenger here, I’m just calling it like it is) and these sciolist-written email marketing 101 articles that desperately try to fool the world into thinking that pretty pictures and templates are persuasive when they appeal to the instantly gratified and instantly gratified only (who, almost always tend to make the worst customers)—worth their salt still believes that using images is an effective strategy.
But these two updates just proved the case I’ve been making for years even more correct.
It’s never been more important to know how to fool algorithms into sending you into the primary inbox.
And you know how you do that?
The same way it’s always been done.
Let me explain:
Long before email was even invented, direct response copywriters figured out a secret for dealing with these algorithms.
Now, back when letters were physical and mailed through the mail, the algorithms weren’t exactly algorithms, per se. They were just regular humans, but they acted in a similar way:
When they collected their mail from the mail box, they acted like an algorithm by performing a two-second scan on the packaging of each letter:
If the packaging of a letter looked like an advertisement, they labeled it “B pile,” and immediately trashed it. But if it looked like it could be a letter from a friend, they labeled it “A pile,” and set it in its own pile to read whenever they got time.
And what the direct response copywriters figured out was this: Making your advertisement appear as if it's a letter from a personal friend got more engagement (more opens), more read-throughs, and, yes, more sales.
In other words:
This is how humans have always behaved and will always behave.
And so, this iOS18.3 update is just a new spin on predicting human nature. But the underlying human nature—where humans don’t like being sold to even if they enjoy buying—hasn’t changed and will not change.
And so, marketers who have ignored human nature are spinning their wheels this morning.
But those of us who have realized that you must follow human nature even if you disagree with it?
We’ll be A-Okay.
In fact, I doubt iOS 18.3 will change how I market by even one iota.
Because my methodology already includes the classic “A Pile vs B Pile” secret that iOS 18.3 is finally catching on to.
Moral of the story?
Never using images in your emails ain’t the worst idea. It’s an even better idea today than it was yesterday.
Plus, it gives you far more room to actually be persuasive.
If you need help implementing an image-less email strategy, hit reply, and let’s chat.
John
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