An MEC account manager in the UK made a very loud exit from the agency Tuesday morning, saying goodbye to colleagues in an email that thanked the agency for the opportunity and then slammed a former superior for anti-Semitic remarks, and for mocking the handicapped and engaging in sexual misconduct at the agency’s offices.The email, written by Kieran Allen, quickly went viral on the Internet, with numerous UK publications weighing in on the story. The missive was published in full on Twitter by UK publication Loaded Magazine (@loadedmag).“I owe a lot to MEC for my training and development,” Allen began. “However, I leave with a horrible taste in my mouth after my working life for the past eight months has been ruined by Greg Shickle,” Allen’s former supervisor at the agency.Allen wrote of having a near-nervous breakdown after being promoted and then having to take on extra responsibilities as a result of a managerial gap left by unfilled positions. He claimed that Shickle became angry at his inability to handle the extra load, because it made Shickle look bad with his own superiors.Allen accused Shickle of openly and derisively referring to the Paralympics as the “Spastic Olympics.” He also alleged that Shickle “openly claimed to be proud ‘not to have a single drop of Jewish blood in him’. ”He also charged the former supervisor with having sex with a female colleague late one night “in the meeting rooms on the third floor” of MEC’s UK offices.The accusations, Allen stated, are “all common knowledge throughout the team. This is Greg’s style of leadership and is gross misconduct on many levels.”MEC issued the following statement in response to Allen’s farewell address: “We are sad that one of our employees has chosen to share their personal views in such a public way and has left the company with such bad feeling. We are taking this issue seriously, though given the highly personal nature of the email, we cannot comment further.”
Marketers have relied on open and click-through rates as the major measures of the success of a program or campaign for the last decade plus. These metrics are good, but don’t always tell the entire story. At my company we began monitoring email marketing engagement as we gathered more and more panel data (aggregated behavioral data on how actual mailbox users interact with messages) over the past year. The metrics we developed while analyzing that data provide deeper insight into program performance, even relative to other marketers’ campaigns. The following are three measures we’ve found to be especially valuable: 1. Inbox Placement-adjusted Clicks and Opens. When marketers see an unexplained dip in email campaign performance, inbox placement rates (IPR) are often the root cause. Low open rates and CTR can make it appear that a campaign stopped working, but the real problem is a sudden drop in the percentage of delivered messages that made it to the inbox (as opposed to the bulk folder, for instance). If your performance metrics don’t account for inbox placement, you can’t accurately track opens or clicks -- but more important, you can’t see when your campaigns are being blocked or bulked. While panel data are more accurate, seed lists are an effective way to measure inbox placement percentages at most smaller ISPs. (The exception is for senders with very low or very high engagement rates.) At top mailbox providers like AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo, panel data should be available from real inbox users as a more reliable proxy for inbox placement. 2. Net-Read Rate (this is different from Open Rate): Apart from IPR-related issues, the problems with open rates are well understood. So what’s a better approach? Using the panel data that I talked about above, you can see the percentage of messages that were read by users. (For the technologists in the crowd, that means that the IMAP “seen,” ”flagged,” or “answered” flags have been set for the messages under review.) Unlike traditional open-rate metrics, this approach doesn’t put you at the mercy of the email client to render images, so it’s a far more accurate measure. 3. Relative Gross Read Rate / Competitive Read Rate Index: Comparing your campaign’s metrics to your past performance is clearly useful, and so is comparing them to the (very good) ESP-driven benchmark data typically broken out by vertical. But neither helps you to confidently create and optimize new campaigns. For that you need to know how your direct competitors’ campaigns performed against others, including yours. Panel data can show you exactly that, letting you see the percentage of users that read other marketers’ messages, so you can immediately determine whether yours were more or less engaging. These are new metrics, and they’re part of a new approach to email marketing measurement. We’re still working on the best ways to use this panel data. What other measurements would be useful? I’d like to hear your opinions.
Finding the right balance in an email program between the needs of the business and the interests of subscribers is an email marketer's ongoing challenge. Crossing the line results in unsubscribes. The most common mistakes are sending too many emails, not respecting preferences, a lack of perceived relevance and inconsistency.