The first DMA Email Council Debate: What is effectiveness in email

Introduction

If you are reading this post to find out a benchmark for open rates or delivery metrics for the email campaigns or programmes that you run, you've come to the wrong place. But if you simply want to get better then please read on.

This overview of the 'email effectiveness' debate could have the information you need to improve the performance from your email marketing, or perhaps even look at how you measure email effectiveness in a different way.

In this post, I've tried to wrap up a 30 minute debate between 20+ people into the key points that were raised.

Let’s start with metrics

In terms of email effectiveness, open rate is an easy measure for email - it is also generally accepted as 'the measure' for email marketing.

However open rates only really become relevant once the optimisation metrics are at an acceptable level - if you send an email to 100,000 people and it only gets delivered to 80,000 then is that effective? I'd suggest not, to be effective you'd first need to focus on the bounce, junk, spam and block metrics and increase the deliverability of the email that you are sending.

So the first measure of email effectiveness is delivery, "if the email doesn't arrive all other metrics are irrelevant".

Your position in the ‘email’ supply chain

The measure of email effectiveness is likely to be different for different people based on their position in the process.

If you are responsible for the creation and application of an email campaign, then your measurement of effectiveness would be based on how well the email has performed based on the metrics in relation to that email.

Did it arrive? Was it opened? How many clicks?

Based on the previous example, the effectiveness of an email agency could be based on the % delivery of the email communications issued. This would be at an individual communication level.

Whereas the effectiveness of a creative agency could be measured on the 'open' rate of the email communication they have created for the client. This would be at an individual message level.

Internally the client could measure the effectiveness of the email based against the business objective of the communication or email programme as a whole. Did (or does) the email programme (continue to) result in the outcome that we wanted. That could be increased web traffic, increased social engagement, more inbound phone calls, increased sign ups, or more sales.

In the case of The Guardian, they measure email effectiveness based the additional web traffic and revenue that has been generated from email activity.

How does your email perform?

Email effectiveness is specific to your business and the history of your email marketing. The working of each business is different, the 'brand' positioning, the position of the email within an email programme. The metrics (and therefore perceived effectiveness) could be different for each email.

One suggestion to create email effectiveness would be through Continuous Improvement based on the history of performance for each email communication. Follow the lead of British Cycling and look to incrementally improve performance against a specific metric that you set for your email marketing.

So your email effectiveness could be measured based on the email performed vs:

the last email communication issued

the overall email metrics within the business

the industry average for your sector

Email effectiveness and the bigger picture

How important is email effectiveness to your business?

In most cases, email doesn’t work in isolation, but is an important part in the overall marketing strategy which has been devised to achieve specific business related objectives.

The importance of email effectiveness to your business could depend on the volume of email issued, the % of marketing budget assigned to email marketing, or the marketing strategy - is email adopted as a programme as part of a data driven marketing strategy or as adhoc support of a series of campaign based marketing activity or as both!

Email effectiveness is different for different people in the organisation.

At the board room or on a business level, the effectiveness of email will be judged on the overall impact email marketing on overall impact against business performance objectives.

On a managerial level, the effectiveness of email will be managed against a lower level metrics linked to strategy, such as the need to raise web traffic, sales or registrations.

On an operational level, the effectiveness of email should be measured against email performance from the industry and from previous campaigns - that is delivery (make sure it gets there), open (make sure it is engaging) and other metrics defined by email marketing strategy.”

Your metric for email effectiveness (laissez-faire approach)

The metric you decide on for your email effectiveness is your metric. It could be open rate, it could be delivery rate, it could be £ generated per email. It doesn't really matter. Email effectiveness and how you measure it, is your choice. But please set a metric for your email activity and measure it.

In summary

The debate raised these key points related to email effectiveness. It depends on:

Your metrics

Your position in the email marketing process

Previous performance of your email campaigns

Importance of email to the bigger picture

Ultimately it's your call on what you consider an effective outcome from the email campaigns that you control within your business.

Just make sure you have a measurement in place (please)