Slogging Toward Email Metrics Standardization

Author:

Sherry Chiger

Source:

Quick: How do you define “open rate”?
 
If you’re not sure of the exact definition, you’re not alone. 
 
“A lot of terms that we use in email marketing don’t really reflect what people think they reflect,” notes Stephanie Miller, global markets catalyst for Return Path. “Plus the definitions that people use for the same terms are different, and how they measure them is different.”
 
These discrepancies are the reason that the DMA’s Email Experience Council (EEC), of which Miller is roundtable leadership chair, set out several years ago to standardize the definitions of common e-mail metrics and, just as important, convince marketers and service providers to use the standardized metrics.
 
For marketers, the primary benefit of standardization is obvious: It’s much easier to compare statistics and benchmarks from one service provider to the next and across industry segments when everyone is defining the metrics the same way. In a survey conducted by the EEC, 89.1% of the 250 respondents said they were in favor of standardization, with just 6.5% against it.
 
But agreeing to the concept of standardization is different from...