📈 What Every Newsletter Operator Needs To Know (And Do) Thanks To Upcoming iOS18 Apple Mail Updates

56% of all emails are opened inside of Apple Mail.

Apple is releasing some of the biggest updates to Mail in years (potentially as soon as December 9th).

Here’s how the iOS 18 Apple Mail update will directly affect newsletters and what to do about it 👇️ 

Helpful Links 🔗 

• 🍎 Official Apple iOS 18 features (PDF | Website)

• 🚀 How established brands are sleeping on turning their organic social audience into revenue (link)

• 👀 ICYMI: 3 Newsletter Ideas That Would Crush (link)

• 🛠️ Our favorite newsletter tools: beehiiv (ESP), Descript (video editing), Sparkloop (growth & monetization), Typedream (custom landing pages), ElevenLabs (AI voiceovers), Sponsy (managing sponsorship operations)*

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What Every Newsletter Operator Should Know (And Do) With Upcoming Apple Mail Updates 👀 

Big changes are coming that will directly affect newsletters.

Let’s start with the #1 most important update that affects you (and what you need to do about it).

Then, I’ll give a quick rundown of the few other iOS18 changes to know about.

1/ Newsletters Will Land in the Updates Tab 🫠 

Similar to Gmail, the Apple Mail inbox will be categorized into:

• Primary: Important, urgent, personal emails

• Transactions: Receipts, confirmations, shipping, travel

• Updates → This is where newsletters will land by default.

• Promotions: Marketing emails, coupons, sales

The categorization will be automatic and driven by AI.

Newsletters will land in Updates. The Primary tab is where you want to be.

So what should we do?

Get into the Primary inbox.

1. Embrace and Adapt: The most effective way to do this will likely be to have your subscribers manually drag and re-categorize your email into the Primary tab. This will move all past emails and send future emails into Primary.

   

2. Resist: It seems like there will be an option for users to opt-out of the new updates inside the Mail app (see screenshot below). This is more of a short-term solution. Odds are that Apple won’t always give users this choice.

So, plan on the taking these steps once these updates are released:

• Tell your newsletter subscribers to recategorize your newsletter by moving it into Primary.

  • Include step by step instructions with a GIF showing people what it looks like.

  • Tell them again.

  • Do this above the fold (aka this should be the first thing they see when they open your email)

  • Include instructions on your thank you page for new subscribers

• Offer an incentive (for example, do a giveaway like outlined below 👇️ )

  • Give away runs for 1 month

  • Subscribers must move you to Primary and reply with a screenshot proving it

  • At the end of the month, let’s say 1,000 people do it. The first 100 people get 20 extra entries to win the giveaway. The next 100 people get 10 extra entries, etc.

Other Updates To Be Aware Of 👀 

Emails from the same sender are grouped together (similar to how text messages show texts from the same person in one place).

This means your past newsletters will be easier to find, hopefully providing a (late) boost to open rates.

2/ Branded Mail 🤝 

Your newsletter will have the opportunity to pop more in the inbox.

If your newsletter has a strong personal touch (vs. a faceless brand), I like the idea of mirroring Apple’s memoji-style contact images to make it seem more like a text from a friend or…imagine this…an actual picture of your face.

Think about your branding, color psychology (bright colors stand out), and the relationship you have with your audience when choosing how you want to look in the inbox.

Anyone who is DMARC certified can apply for Branded Email. Paved put together a helpful guide to do that here.

3/ AI Summaries Will Replace Preview Text 🤖 

Apple Intelligence will read and summarize the contents of the email and present that to users in place of the preview text.

This means:

• Subject lines will become more important

• The content of your email still matters (duh)

• Clickbait will become harder (let us rejoice)

Takeaways + Next Steps🏃‍♂️ 

• Be ready to tell your subscribers to move you to Primary

  • Do this at the top of your newsletters

  • Consider incentivizing it with a giveaway and gamifying it to drive more people to do it

  • Include language and a how-to GIF on your thank you page to encourage this from the moment they subscribe

• Apply for Branded Mail

  • Extend your visual branding into the inbox, stand out visually from spam, and build trust (instructions to apply here)

• Subject Lines Will Be More Important

  • Drop every subject line you’ve used into a spreadsheet, upload to ChatGPT or Claude,

Cheers,

Isaac + Kieran 🫡 

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