Identifying The E-mail Marketing Measurement Chasm

David Daniels | March 09, 2007, 12:43 PM

A new report from the EEC (E-mail Experience Council) identifies the lack of measurement standards across the industry. We first uncovered this issue in this 2004 report and at that time found that 61% of the ESPs (E-mail Service Providers) either removed bounces or failed to include all failures in the gross mailing numbers thus impacting important metrics such as delivery and click-through rates. The EEC findings reaffirm that this continues to be an industry wide issue, which ultimately renders comparative industry benchmarks useless.

In a new JupiterResearch report released this week, E-mail Marketing Measurement – Making Metrics Meaningful, we examine not only the continued issue of metric manipulation, but the tremendous under utilization of common metrics including click-through and conversion rate. While our findings indicate that marketers desire to optimize their mailings, most are failing to track and utilize the very key performance indicators that are the levers to improving mailing performance.

While an incredible need exists for the industry to build a common metric methodology, marketers themselves have to embrace the concept of continuous improvement by making use engagement oriented metrics.