Email open rates and the beautiful game
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Let me make a tenuous connection to my other hobby to make a point about measuring your email marketing success.Some folk seem to be suggesting that proponents of open rates should have their heads removed and mounted on poles in the lobby. To warn other ignorants not focused enough on the end result of their email campaigns.
The real measure of your campaign's success, they say, is the bottom line result. What did you want to achieve in concrete responses (sales, downloads, visits etc) and what did the email deliver?
Correct I say, but...oops...there goes the baby bawling its way down the hillside with the bathwater.
You measure success by measuring what you're really trying to achieve. But you learn how to improve by measuring everything else, too.
Soccer managers worry about the end result. Success is measured by the final score after 90 minutes.
But when the team turns up to training the next day, it's all the other metrics that help determine what to work on...shots on goal, tackles made, offsides conceded, possession rates, etc. etc.
So it is with email. Open rates etc. are not good absolute measures for telling you if you did a great job or not. But that's not what they're really for...
More information:
How to use email open rates
Email success measures: the good, the bad and the irrelevant
Tags: email marketing, email open rates, email marketing metrics, email marketing statistics
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2 Comments:
As industry open percentages continue to dwindle it makes more sense that the metrics should be less about percentages and more about the quality and quantity of results. Regardless of the percentages, how many were opened and what the following results were from those who opened are the only important statistics. You can make up for the lower open percentages by identifying and accumulating more database names and conducting more frequent campaigns. Quantity and quality can make up for lower percentages.
Griff
http://eprospector.typepad.com/small_business_sales_and_/
By 
Griff, on
05 November, 2007
I think it's also worth noting that falling open rates are not necessarily reflecting less "opens" but come from more barriers to measuring an open (i.e. more blocked images.)
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
06 November, 2007
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