New metric for email marketing suggested

A new way of measuring the success of email marketing campaigns has been put forwards by the Email Experience Council (eec).

The council's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has developed a set of standards and definitions for a metric known as the render rate.

This rate refers to the number of times a tracking image embedded in an email's HTML is rendered in recipients email programs, with variations such as unique and total emails rendered, unique and total actions, and unique email action rate defined by the eec.

In its whitepaper on the new metric, the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable said current methods of measuring email campaigns with open rates are now inadequate due to a lack of consistency across the sector in how they are defined.

"The lack of a standard definition makes it all but impossible to compare open rates across multiple email platforms and creates wide variances in open rate industry benchmarks," it stated.

Feedback is being invited on the new metric until the end of March.