The EEC Spearhead Metric Standardization
Since the inception of email marketing, professionals have struggled to come together and agree upon a means of determining metrics. Believe it or not, there have yet to be any standards put in place.
The landscape of determining email metrics have largely consisted of rogue marketers and independent states, determining their own specific way of measuring the results for their emails.
But this is all about to change. The EEC (Email Experience Council) is stepping up and facing this problem head on by proposing industry-wide standards for metrics. The EEC has created a group of leaders in the email marketing industry, dubbed the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable. The group is focusing on ESPs (Email Service Providers) to join the movement, as they are the ones who will be implementing the reporting standards in the future.
For more information on the S.A.M.E. (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) project, visit the EEC’s site. Once there, you should review the particularly interesting Project Guide PDF. Pay close attention to the ESP Reporting Matrix in that document… Out of 10 ESPs, each determined Delivery, Opens and Clicks differently—no wonder there’s such a huge need for standardization.
I can predict that if this gets momentum on the ESP side of things, there are going to be huge changes in email marketing. New terms and definitions popping up, completely transforming the ideas of success and failure. Hopefully for the whole, the growing pains won’t take too long to leapfrog.
MindComet will be in full support of this initiative, adopting the new standards by December 2010.
Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jul. 07, 2010