How iOS 18 will affect your subscriber relationships across channels

What would autumn be without an update from Apple?

Right when you’re in the thick of finalizing your Black Friday Cyber Monday plans, the tech giant announces changes that can shift the ground under your feet.

But don’t worry too much yet—this year’s announcement isn’t likely to throw a wrench into any well-laid plans, and the changes you’ll make will bring you one step closer to a symbiotic relationship with your subscribers across email, SMS, and push notifications.

Let’s dig into the changes.

New inbox categorization will prioritize known senders and time-sensitive messages

The most significant change to how subscribers—those who use Apple Mail—will see your emails is Apple’s new inbox categorization.

The primary tab will prioritize messages from friends, family, and colleagues as well as time-sensitive messages. (This may evolve over time, so it’s worth keeping an eye on it.)

Apple hasn’t made it clear whether they’ll differentiate a marketing email trying to prompt subscribers to visit a brand’s site before a promotion ends from, say, a reminder to check in for an upcoming flight.

So, it’s worth keeping an eye on your marketing messages that include countdown timers, as well as subject lines, preview text, or header language that specifies a timeline. Set up a dummy email address—if you haven’t already—and see where your marketing messages with urgent language land.

Image source: Apple

Apple will organize emails that aren’t time-sensitive or from friends, family, or colleagues into new categories, based on how people interact with your emails:

Shane McElroy, product manager at Klaviyo, recommends focusing on 2 areas to keep your emails in the most visible category.

1. Develop a segmentation strategy that prioritizes your most engaged audience

A batch-and-blast strategy could put your sender reputation at risk.

But a thoughtful segmentation strategy—sending more regularly to your most engaged subscribers, and sending less frequently to those who engage less—will help you get relevant messaging to the people most likely to open and click.

2. Make sure your content is engaging and relevant to your audience

A string of endless emails promoting sales bores subscribers and risks losing their attention.

“Even before iOS 18 goes into full effect, it’s solid marketing to have a balance of educational content, news pieces, and promotion,” McElroy says.

It’s also worth creating content that goes the extra mile to encourage engagement, such as:

• Surveys
• Quizzes
• Gamification (if it’s appropriate for your brand)

“A healthy mix of content, especially when personalized and spread across channels, can increase subscriber engagement,” says Mindy Regnell, head of market intelligence at Klaviyo. “It can also help inbox providers see your brand as more than just promotional—potentially improving your inbox placement.”

Apple Mail will group your emails together

The new iOS update will group messages by sender and show a snippet of 2–3 at the same time. That means your audience may see several messages from your brand at the same time. It will be important to make sure your brand voice is consistent across the customer journey—the last thing you need is for a subscriber to see you contradict yourself in side-by-side emails.

First impressions will also be more important than ever. Not just your subject line, but your header and the first few lines of copy in your emails will become even more prime real estate than they would normally be.

Your first order of business once the update is in full effect should be to look at your brand’s emails in the Apple Mail app and make sure your design team makes any necessary changes.

Apple Intelligence will summarize your emails (but only for Apple Mail users)

Take a deep breath—this isn’t as big of a deal as it sounds. First of all, the new Apple Intelligence will only be available for certain iPhone models:

• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• All iPhone 16 models

But yes, they will provide summaries of your marketing emails for Apple Mail users. While Apple hasn’t made the specifics clear, brands should expect to see some content alterations by Apple Intelligence.

It’s important to keep this key point in mind: Apple Intelligence will be drawing from your incoming email content, preview text, alt text for images, and subscriber engagement history.

Here are 3 way to make sure Apple’s summary for Apple Mail users does right by your brand:

“This part of the update further underscores the importance of relevant, high-quality, personalized email content,” says Nader Fotouhi, group product manager at Klaviyo.

Rich Communication Services (RCS) will upgrade your SMS game

RCS—an enhanced version of SMS that makes mobile messaging more dynamic—has been around for a while between peers on Android, but Apple is finally getting on board.

What does it mean?

RCS lets you send and receive “rich” messages, similar to what you can do on WhatsApp:

• High-resolution images and videos
• Enhanced emojis and stickers
• In-app video calling
• Advanced functionality for group chats
• Cross-device messaging (for using multiple devices with a single identity)

But that’s not all. RCS also supports features that can help your brand level up your mobile communications with subscribers:

• Interactive elements like buttons for surveys and carousels to showcase multiple products
• Longer messages up to 10,000 characters, providing more context and detail
• Branded messaging, including custom color palettes, logos, and icons to help you stand out
• Business verification that includes contact information and verified badges to build trust with subscribers
• Embedded QR codes for easy in-person redemption
• In-app payments so customers can complete transactions without leaving the messaging app
• Read receipts to gain insight into who has viewed your messages for better reporting
• Typing notifications to know when a customer is typing, which helps build a more responsive, two-way conversation for customer support

At Klaviyo, we’re actively developing RCS capabilities—expect to see them in 2025. For a deeper dive into RCS and how it will affect your SMS program, read our RCS blog.

Apple will summarize—and prioritize—your push notifications

Instead of the actual body content of push notifications, your push audience will now see an Apple-generated summary when notifications are collapsed.

But don’t fret just yet—and definitely don’t fire the writer in charge of your push notifications. As of now, summaries may only appear for notifications from Apple Messages, Apple Mail, Apple Calendar, Slack, and WhatsApp.

But Apple will also display priority notifications on the top of a phone’s lock screen and notification center, smartly determining which notifications are most important and giving priority to apps and contacts the user interacts with most often. Recipients will also be able to customize which notifications they deem to be most important.

Image source: Apple

“The best way to continue to grow your push program in response to these updates is to make sure your push notifications are timely, personalized, and concise,” says Mark Piana, lead product manager at Klaviyo.