Understanding Email Metrics - We Need Standardization

March 5th, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

Jeanniey Mullen wrote in ClickZ today about how calculating email metrics differs by Email Service Provider (ESP). Check out the article: “Which Vendor is better?“

Since we started publishing quarterly trends reports in 2006, I’ve developed a big pet peeve about how every ESP seems to calculate metrics differently.

At card, we have been using two different ESPs based on each client’s needs, and recently we’ve started using a third. Shockingly, all three calculate opens and clicks differently. This makes creating our quarterly reports frustrating, because we do it according to our most popular ESP - but then we get clients from the other two calling worried about their results because they are so different than our averages.(In the most recent report however, I calculated clicks in two different ways - while it draws attention to the problem that all metrics aren’t equal, it’s still not a great solution)

I would love to see some standardization - metrics are hard enough to understand now with all the potential variables that can affect any campaign, but unless you are fully emerged in email marketing, it can be difficult to understand the differences.

The ClickZ article also states that the Email Experience Council is releasing a deliverability roundtable study about the topic.

Posted in Email marketing |