iOS18 Launch Preview: What Email Marketers need to know

Apple’s latest operating system, iOS18, launches this autumn and we’re here to give you a heads up on what this means for consumers and the impact on marketers.

The main headline for iOS18 is the inclusion of AI (Apple Intelligence, in this case) which has been built into the bedrock of the operating system. This has a knock-on effect through many of its native apps, but here we’ll focus on the Mail app on iPhone and iPad.

Who will see these updates?

It should be noted that although iOS18 will be supported on devices all the way back to the iPhone SE 2nd Generation, the AI features themselves will only be supported on iPhone 15 Pro and later (and currently, that’s the latest device that Apple have released). Why? Apple say the new AI features require the A17 Pro Chip to run the necessary complex algorithms. Mac and iPad users, on the other hand, will be able to see the benefits of AI features on devices with an M1 chip (which was introduced in 2020) or later. So, for now, this will only affect the early adopters in your audience. But as your readers upgrade over the next couple of years, these changes will become more relevant.

Now, on to the features:

AI Preview

For the Consumer: When iOS18 releases, consumers will be treated to an AI summary of their emails in place of the usual preheader. Interestingly, Apple’s announcement tells us that these previews are being generated locally on the consumer’s device, so it’s likely that the same email will generate a different preview on a user-to-user basis.

For the Marketer: Until these features are included in the beta we can’t say for sure, but it seems unlikely that there would be a workaround for this. The response from a marketer’s standpoint would be to ensure that content is clearly structured and emails are accessibly and semantically coded, so that an AI can effectively parse their meaning. Other providers, like Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook will not be affected, so the art of a good preheader is not dead yet.

Summarise Email

For the Consumer: When an email is opened, consumers will see a ‘summarise’ button in the top right. Click it to generate an AI summary of the message. This might seem familiar, Gmail and Yahoo have both already rolled out similar functionality to some degree.

*Before and after generating the summary (credit: Apple)*

For the Marketer: No one wants to be paraphrased, but consumers are becoming more and more time-conscious, so this is a difficult one. On the one hand, you may feel compelled to condense your messaging in order to compete with the summary. It’s not a bad instinct - short form content generally leads to better engagement. But let’s assume that your readers are making liberal use of this summarise button. Surely, it’s better provide detailed content to give the AI a wealth of information to summarise? Currently, this is all speculation. For now, perhaps consider teasing content in your email which drives traffic to your site. After all, the AI can’t summarise information that’s not in the email… for now…

Watch the Apple Announcement for this feature

Inbox Categorisation

For the Consumer: iOS18 introduces tabs to the mail inbox. You might be familiar with this concept from the Gmail inbox. Apple will use AI to sort emails into categories such as Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. Consumers will also have the option to manually sort emails into whichever category they like.

For the Marketer: Again, there’s not much control that the marketer has here. The AI will decide which tab you belong in, although the user can override that. Working on your tone of voice and providing genuinely valuable content will forge a rapport with your reader that will make them more likely to manually move you into a preferable category.

Digest View

For the Consumer: iOS18 introduces something called the Digest View. In simple terms, the Digest View is a place where all the emails sent by one entity are collected for an easy overview. If a reader wanted to find flight information that’s spread over multiple emails, for example, this might be a good place to do it.

For the Marketer: This section comprises two major elements. The header is decorated with the sender’s logo, name and a background colour based on the logo’s brand colour. Although Apple has previously had incomplete support for BIMI, a savvy marketer should ensure that they have BIMI configured for their brand in order to have confidence in how the brand is displayed. There’s no reason not to.

The content of the Digest View is a series of emails. With that in mind, it might be smart to review the design of your emails to see that pertinent information is visible at the top.

Furthermore, it is speculatively possible that performing a text search within these emails will be possible, so using live text instead of text in images is going to be even more preferable than it already was.

Watch the Apple Announcement about this feature

The Time Frame

Whilst the beta for iOS 18 is available now, some features (including Mail’s AI features) are not included in the beta until this autumn, so some specifics are still unclear.

The full release of iOS18 will roll out later in the year, likely September, with the full suite of AI features to be added by update in October, as Apple irons out some of the kinks that the AI features have reportedly been experiencing.

Thoughts

It seems that the upside offered by these features could be broadly described as time-saving. The Apple announcement video uses this term multiple times: ‘at a glance’. Everyone, it seems, is in a terrible rush and does not have time for an interested read. If anything is lost here, it’s that which is filtered out by the AI - essentially any trace of humanity or personality that may have been at the core of your message. But naturally, and perhaps sooner than you think, this will be the new normal, iPhone or not – so it pays to get ahead of it now. Maintaining a relationship with your readership is more important than ever if you want to encourage them to engage with you directly, rather than be fed a digitized version through the intermediary of a summation bot.

Have thoughts on these updates?

Come find me on LinkedIn

Jack Patrick, Senior Email Developer @ Profusion

Sources

https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2024/06/ios-18-makes-iphone-more-personal-capable-and-intelligent-than-ever/
https://knak.com/blog/email-changes-ios18-sequoia/#inbox-categorization-or-inbox-tabs
https://www.badsender.com/en/2024/06/13/apple-mail-ios18/
Regarding AI running locally: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amix3k_this-is-one-of-the-best-diagrams-ive-seen-activity-7209108605642416129-yaC_
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2024/07/29/apple-ai-features-delayed-ios-18-iphone-16-leak/