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Email marketing is one of, if not the most, measurable communication channels in the space. The challenge with these metrics is that everyone calculates and views them differently; so as email marketers look to learn from one another, they may not actually be comparing apples to apples.

The DMA recently released survey results that quoted open rates on a house list at nearly 20%, a click-through rate of 6.64% and a conversion rate of 1.73% - so what does that mean to you and your email marketing program? Here’s what it says to me:

1. An open rate of nearly 20%...does that mean that 80% of your email marketing recipients don’t open what you send them? Most likely (or are not turning on their images, which is possible – but doesn’t explain away just how soft this reality is). We, as an industry of marketers, need to do a better job. We need to provide better content, a more relevant experience and a motivation to compel our subscribers to open our email marketing communications. It also means we need to take a serious look at our database. It may be a fine time to renew your recipient's permissions. Just like you clean out your closet in the Spring – sometimes you need to lose some extra baggage and do some spring cleaning of your email database. Remember – it is about the QUALITY of your database not the QUANTITY.

2. Click-through-rates (CTR) of 6.64%...my first question is, “is that a figure calculated as a percentage of messages delivered or messages opened?” I am going to hope for our sake that it is a percentage of delivered – because if we are providing our subscribers with content and calls-to-action that only drive 6% of those that opened the message to click…we are in big trouble. So if nearly 7% of the messages delivered generate some kind of click action, we still have plenty of room for improvement.

In our attempts to be brief and scannable within our email marketing communications, have we taken it too far? Are our messages unclear or just not compelling? Time to do some testing to find out! We need to spend more time analyzing WHAT it is that motivates our customer base. It may be our desire to offload distressed inventory with a free shipping offer, but the customer may prefer a %-off or $-off coupon code that would send your CTR in to the double-digits. That wouldn’t be so bad now would it?

3. Yikes! Only 1.73% convert?! I am not going to attempt to assume the calculation here. The point here is that we work in a channel that is more easily personalized, more measurable and more real-time than direct mail or telemarketing and yet our efforts under perform them all. Why is that? Are the DM and phone calls more personal? Are we moving too fast to keep our customers best interest in mind and provide them a satisfying experience?

Let’s strive to up these numbers next year – we need to rival the conversion numbers of telemarketing. We can’t be as bothersome as calls during dinner time, can we?