We’re blessed with metrics in email marketing. How the days ‘ole’ days of DM seem such a distant past, when metrics were few and reasonably easy to understand. Not now, email marketing has more than its fair share of metrics. Too many some will cry. Too confusing say others. But we are where we are.

On the Legal and Best Practice Hub we’ve attempted to demystify the terminology used to give both the experienced and inexperienced a clear glossary of what the different metrics and terms mean and what you should take into consideration when using them.

It wasn’t an easy task as you can no doubt appreciate. Everyone who saw them, in advance of them being published on the Email Marketing Council’s blog, had a difference of opinion in what something meant. It was a challenge to come to some form of consensus and it took us longer than we ever anticipated.

Putting together the glossary of metrics is an attempt to have a readily accessible and usable guide to email metrics, so that everyone can use it and understand the differences between the interpretations of metrics from one organisation to another. Our goal on the Legal and Best Practice Hub is to try and standardise the meanings rather than complicate even more by creating new ones, when one already in use will work. However, that may be biting off more than we can chew.

Firstly, we need to gain feedback on the definitions that we have published and I’d ask that you read our blog and comment on them. They are being published in parts, as with so many metrics, we’d never get any feedback if we published them at once. They can be found at:

Metrics and their meanings part 1

Metrics and their meanings Part 2

Secondly, at the end of this exercise we will update the document with your feedback and publish it on the DMA website.

Jonathan Burston
Director, Customer Solutions Group, CACI
Chair of Legal & Best Practice Hub, DMA Email Marketing Council