Quick Tip - Accuracy in Reporting
March 27th, 2008 by Megan OuelletThe lack of standardization in the email marketing industry continues to confuse and in many cases mislead marketers into thinking that their campaigns are performing better than they actually are. While it is nice to see high percentage stats, isn’t it better to know what the real results are? That way, you have the opportunity to fix any issues so you reach more of your subscribers with each mailing.The first major problem in calculating results is the fact that some ESPs use the number of sent messages to determine the total number of messages while others use the number of messages delivered to recipients’ inboxes, which is a much more accurate approach. However, problems still arise as some ESPs count a message as being delivered once it reaches the ISP even if the ISP blocks it, while others also count messages delivered to the junk mail folder. In order to get the most accurate results as possible, ask your ESP how they determine this metric as every other metric depends on it.
The next major issue in calculating results is whether your ESP only counts the total number of opens and clicks or if they report on the number of unique recipients that opened or clicked on a message. While this might seem like a small inconsistency, it can greatly skew results. For example, if a message that was delivered to 100 recipients generated a 75 opens and 50 clicks, the sender would see a 75% open rate and 50% click through rate. However, on closer inspection, if the message was opened and clicked on 20 times by the same recipient, those results would be incorrect – that is why you should only look at the number of unique recipients that are responding to your message. If the message was delivered to 100 people and was opened 75 times but only 30 of those opens were from unique recipients, your open rate drops from 75% to 30% And if that message was clicked on 50 times, but only 12 of those clicks were unique recipients, your click rate drops from 50% to 12%. Instead of believing that half of your list is interested in your messaging when only 12 of the 100 people clicked on a link, you have a much more accurate account of how your subscribers are responding to your email messages. And that’s what really matters.
While it is important to know that one recipient clicked on several links in a message, that information should be used to target the subscriber with information that is relevant to them. It should not be used as on overall account of how your emails are performing.
We have published several white papers on the topic, including Email Marketing Metrics: Looking Beyond Open and Read Rates and Email Marketing Metrics: Optimizing your Goals, Benchmarks, and Statistics. Our experts are available to help you. Contact us today to learn more.
del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Google Yahoo!