Metrics and bounces and critical thought

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The Email Experience Council released a summary of their recent look at how the industry deals with metrics and bounces.

Their conclusion was essentially that we need standards here. For how metrics are calculated, how bounces are defined etc. It's good to see them pushing to give the email marketing sector a stronger theoretical and practical base to build from. You can read their thoughts in this ClickZ article.

I'm less enthusiastic about the sky-is-falling tone of some of the interpretations of their survey. Email marketing has been growing strongly so it's hard to imagine how standardisation issues now suddenly represent "a threat to the channel itself."

If anyone can explain that to me, please comment.

More on email marketing statistics | Tags: ,

Permalink | March 06, 2007 | 2 comment(s)
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2 Comments:

a "threat to the channel" may be a little dramatic, but I do think non-standardized metrics are hurting general trust in the industry.

For example, say you used three different ESPs and because of calculating metrics differently, you got three very different results from each... If you didn't know about this problem, wouldn't you think something was up?

I would probably think that these crazy email people were just making up random numbers to make me feel better!
:)
By Blogger Kelly Rusk, on 06 March, 2007  
 

Thanks Kelly. I agree with you. Standards would be great, which is why I applaud the Council's efforts.

I just worry that when we over-dramatize things, it becomes difficult to get people to react when a real channel-threatening crisis occurs. And it can cause unnecessary panic among those who were doing fine until someone told them they had a problem (if you see what I mean).
By Anonymous Mark Brownlow, on 06 March, 2007  
 

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