Apple's Hide My Email: A New Reason to Accept Only Corporate Email Addresses

Lead-generation forms and promotional email signups are a value exchange between B2B marketers and their intended audiences. In exchange for research and other content, B2B brands hope to improve how form-completers think of their brand, identify them and their companies, and form an ongoing relationship. However, when noncorporate email addresses are used, it can be difficult for marketers to meet their goals. This fall, Apple is introducing Hide My Email, a paid feature that allows users to enter a unique, randomly generated icloud.com email address into forms.

Hide My Email could cause an increase in hard bounces, as it masks people's identity and could be turned off at any time. To protect their email program, marketers could stop accepting email addresses from certain domains, icloud.com emails, or all noncorporate emails. The pros and cons of each option should be taken into account, and it is important to balance the needs of customers with the needs of the business.

Privacy continues to be a major challenge for marketers, but decisions can be made to protect their email program. Through understanding the risks of Hide My Email, marketers can make informed decisions to protect their email deliverability.