Apple’s Link Tracking Protection rolled out with iOS 17 and expanded significantly with iOS 18 in late 2024. If you’re a marketer running email campaigns, this change is already affecting how you track clicks and measure success, and it’s only going to grow throughout what remains of 2025. With iPhones making up over half the US smartphone market, most businesses sending emails to consumers will feel this impact during the crucial fall marketing season.
Here’s what you need to know to keep your email marketing profitable and measurable.
What Is Apple’s Link Tracking Protection and How Does It Work?
Apple’s Link Tracking Protection is a privacy feature that automatically removes tracking information from links when people click inside Apple apps like Mail and Messages or when using Safari’s Private Browsing.
Here’s what that means for email campaigns:
- Before: When someone clicked a link, tracking codes added to the URL showed which campaign drove the visit and how well your emails generated sales or actions.
- Now: With Link Tracking Protection, Apple strips away those codes before the visitor even reaches your website. As a result, your analytics tools can’t see where the visitor came from or which campaign was responsible.
Losing those tracking codes is more than a technical issue. It directly affects how you measure ROI.
How Link Tracking Protection Impacts ROI
Knowing what Link Tracking Protection does is one thing. Understanding how it affects your business’s bottom line is another.
For marketers that depend on email marketing data to make important budget and strategy decisions, this change creates real challenges. Because the tracking information is removed, you won’t be able to see the full picture of which emails brought people to your website and led to sales.
This means you may notice fewer clicks reported from people who read your emails using Apple Mail, even if those people are still engaging with your content just as much as before. This gap in data is called an attribution gap, and it can make your email campaign results look worse than they actually are.
Many marketers are concerned that Link Tracking Protection makes traditional ways of measuring email ROI less reliable, especially for emails sent to Apple device users.
Email Metrics You Can Still Trust
You can still get valuable insights on your email performance despite tracking limitations with these metrics.
- First-party tracking: Your email provider records clicks on its servers before Apple strips out tracking details, so these internal click logs remain reliable.
- Conversions: Actions tied directly to your CRM, such as purchases or form submissions, still provide dependable measures of ROI. Connecting campaign activity with real business results remains the most trusted method of evaluation.
- Clicks: Click-through rates still reflect overall engagement trends. Although exact numbers might change, CTR remains useful for comparing campaigns over time.
Alternative Methods for Performance Tracking
Of course, metrics alone don’t solve attribution gaps. To overcome the limitations created by Apple’s privacy updates, many businesses are shifting to stronger direct tracking methods that preserve attribution.
- Tagged landing pages for campaign attribution: Creating dedicated landing pages or branded redirects for each campaign helps you maintain accurate attribution, even if Apple strips tracking details from links.
- Syncing UTMs directly into your CRM: Captured campaign information on sign-up forms can be pushed straight into your CRM, linking marketing efforts directly to customer records.
Alternative methods can patch attribution gaps, but proving ROI requires going a step further. That raises the core question:
How can we prove the ROI of email without traditional tracking?
The most reliable proof is tying campaign activity to conversions stored in your CRM. By connecting form fills, purchases, or inquiries directly back to the campaigns that drove them, you can demonstrate ROI without relying on Apple-dependent metrics.
Tying ROI back to conversions gives you a reliable foundation today, but lasting success requires building a strategy that adapts to ongoing privacy changes.
Future-Proofing Your Email Marketing Strategy
Privacy changes like Link Tracking Protection will continue. The best approach moving forward is to build stronger first-party data, reducing dependence on third-party cookies and device-level data.
Build Your First-Party Data Foundation
Use surveys, preference centers, and progressive profiling to collect customer information directly. The more you know about your customers through direct interaction, the less you need to rely on tracking pixels and cookies.
Invest in Integrated Marketing Technology
Choose email marketing platforms that integrate seamlessly with your CRM system. This creates a complete view of customer interactions that Apple’s privacy measures can’t disrupt.
Prepare for the New Attribution Reality
Industry experts agree that marketing attribution will increasingly rely on first-party and modeled data instead of cookies or device identifiers by late 2025. Businesses that begin adapting now will gain a competitive advantage in email attribution in 2025 and set themselves apart in a privacy-first marketing landscape.
Learn More
Ready to stay ahead of Apple’s Link Tracking Protection and maintain confidence in your email results? The emfluence Marketing Platform offers reliable first-party tracking, deep CRM integration, and flexible reporting. By using workflows and conversion tracking that still work without link data, your business can show email ROI clearly even as privacy rules change.
See how emfluence makes proving ROI simple, even in a privacy-first world. Contact us today at expert@emfluence.com.
