Comments on: Metrics and their meaning – Part 4

By: affiliate network uk

affiliate network uk — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:53:19 +0000

Yes it is a fantasy

By: Craig Aron

Craig Aron — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:27:42 +0000

Richard, you make a great point. Working for a large direct marketing company, I see first-hand the importance of measuring reach rather than deliverability. As pointed out, deliverability is often a deceiving metric. As a marketer, I’m much more concerned with how my audience is interacting with my communications. If the value proposition is communicated clearly in my email messages, then we are less likely to have to worry about deliverability metrics.

Craig Aron

Manager, Digital and Emerging Media, Publishers Clearing House

By: Richard Gibson

Richard Gibson — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:06:34 +0000

With regard to the definition of “deliverability,” marketers should be concerned about and know how many of their emails reached the inbox. As you noted, there is definitely a difference between the number of emails successfully delivered to an ISP and the number of those emails that reach consumers’ inboxes.

‘Accepted rate’ is unrepresentative of success and can mask larger issues such as whether your emails were eventually delivered to the bulk or junk folder vs. the inbox. Worse, many of these messages may not be delivered to any folder accessible to the customer – they simple fall into a blackhole where they aren’t delivered and aren’t bounced back to the system.

Marketers’ ultimate goal is to reach consumers’ inboxes. Whilst it may not be possible for all marketers, inbox placement data offers a far better metric of email deliverability success. If it is not possible to get inbox placement rates, marketers should definitely know how their in-house systems or external providers are defining deliverability. We see time and again that marketers who assume that the “delivered” metric seen on their reports means those messages went to the inbox are very much mistaken.

Richard Gibson

Chair, Benchmarking Hub, DMA Email Marketing Council and Channel Relationship Manager, (UK) Return Path.