Email Experience Council (EEC) working on new definitions for email measurements
February 24th, 2009 by Heather MaloneyThe EEC has been working on a new set of definitions to help email marketers see consistency in measurements used to gauge the successfulness of an email campaign.
In a nutshell (so that you don’t have to go through the rather dry documentation) they are recommending that:
- the term open rate be changed to render rate, which more accurately describes what we are measuring: the fact that we know that an email has been opened because an image we included in it has been rendered in the email client.
- an action rate be used to measure the number of renders + click throughs. At the moment, eNudge determines that if a person clicks on a URL that they have actually also opened the email, for obvious reasons. The EEC is recommending that these are kept separate as renders and clicks, but collated into one action rate measure which will add the two together.
The EEC are seeking input from email marketers and email service providers (like eNudge) into the new terms.
In terms of the way eNudge measures email activity, I would really like your feedback on these two questions:
1. Do you want to know if one person has opened your emails multiple times?
2. Would you like to know that someone has clicked on a link, but not rendered the images of your email?
3. Would you like to know if an email has actually reached the inbox (whether it was deleted, read or not)?
by 
February 24th, 2009 at 3:06 am
1. YES. Also, if I know the time they opened it each time, this will tell me how frequently they have been returning to the information.
2. Not so sure if this is relevant for the type of emails that I use.
3. YES. My understanding is that someone can still read it without opening it. If they are being deleted without being opened it may indicate that the content is not grabbing their attention.
Additionally, I would like to know if they have forwarded it to someone else who then may be a new potential prospect.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:22 am
As with Peter above, yes to 1 and 3, along with his comment of forwarding. For me I would like to know 2 as well.
I think this area of electronic tracking is a case of “I know what I don’t know”. That is, I know you can (but don’t know exactly how to) obtain the information / statistics that will help me ascertain where the visitors are leaving (once they’ve clicked through on a link).
And are the readers counted as opened if they haven’t downloaded images, yet read it in their preview pane?
Thank you Heather. I enjoy reading your newsletters.