The latest research from Marketing Sherpa, looking at the most commonly utilised performance metrics by maturity phase of the email marketing enduser, provides some interesting insights into how deeply practitioners systematically measure.
Of particular interest is seeing the proportion of endusers who do not measure things, even at the mature, strategic, end of the scale. Take a look at the following graph:
So, 40% of mature users don't analyse the different link click-throughs; 56% don't look at the performance of different data segments; and 38% don't or can't analyse post click conversion rates.
This fresh-to-release study, conducted a few months after the European benchmark survey I authored for FEDMA last year, reminded me of some of the key conclusions of that earlier report. Strikingly, users who had considered themselves strategic email marketing practitioners hadn't projected that sense of savvy when it came to campaign performance practise. Those who saw email marketing as strategically important for their organisations nonetheless often had poor visibility of metrics such as conversion to sale and conversion to action.
With just 16% of campaigns entirely data driven, and 38% of campaigns driven by some data, it is apparent that there is a way to go before the critical insight and testing necessary for optimising the email marketing channel is systematically practised.
Even when metrics are in widespread use, such as delivery rate, are practitioners really measuring in full awareness and knowledge? Most practitioners will determine deliverability as delivery to Internet or to mail server as the primary measure (i.e. less the hard and soft bounce codes), but delivery to inbox or Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) is a far better measure. Why? Because around 18% of email never ends up in the Inbox, or even in a Spam folder; nor is it accounted for in the bounce data. It simply disappears, into a virtual Bermuda Triangle. The worse your reputation, the greater the problem.
Much in the same way practitioners focus on improving their click through rates, they must also monitor, manage and take steps to continually improve their reputation to improve IPR, campaign performance and user engagement.
What this evident gap in email practise perception and reality truly highlights, is that whilst we tend to view email as a mature marketing channel, there is still a way to go to master it. Whilst email may have been around as a viable marketing channel for more than a decade, we are far from the point where outstanding direct marketing disciplines are routinely applied to it, and where the nuances of the medium are yet globally understood and managed.
