Email Quality Score: Your Secret Weapon for Post-MPP Success

The Challenges of Post-Apple MPP for Email Marketers

As email marketers, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to figure out what content resonates best with our audiences.

Prior to Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), a lot of folks were using open rate along with click rate to give us that information. However, post-MPP, the amount of reliable open data is significantly reduced and, in some cases (like one of our clients with high MPP adoption), completely unreliable.

The Impact of Apple MPP on Metrics

Apple MPP, introduced in the fall of 2021, was a game-changer for email marketers. This feature prevents senders from knowing when an email has been opened by the user, as Apple pre-loads images (including the tracking pixels) on their own server before delivering the email to the user’s Apple Mail inbox.

As a result, the traditional metric of open rate has become less reliable for assessing the effectiveness of email campaigns. For many email marketers, this change required a reevaluation of how we measure engagement and campaign success.

Discovering the Email Quality Score

Shortly after the release of MPP in the fall of 2021, I attended a Litmus webinar and they casually mentioned using an email quality score as an alternative metric to open rates. Intrigued, I looked into the concept and found this article by Lucas Chevillard that explained it further.

What is an Email Quality Score?

Essentially, an email quality score gives you a benchmark of what content readers enjoy and what content they hate. It’s calculated by using the formula:

Email Quality Score = 1 – (Unsubscribes / Unique Clicks)

The score accounts for positive audience signals (unique clicks) and negative audience signals (unsubscribes) to give a balanced assessment of the email content. By focusing on these two key metrics, the email quality score provides a clearer picture of how well your content is received.

In his original blog post, Lucas displayed this result as a percentage. After we started using it, we found that changing the metric from a percentage to a decimal-based number helped our clients more clearly understand situations where high unsubscribes on specific customer journey campaigns drove the score into the negative.

Examples of Using Email Quality Score

To illustrate how to use an email quality score, here are some examples of how we display it:

Email Name	Unique Clicks	Unsubscribes	Email Quality Score
Example Email 1	51	13	+0.75
Example Email 2	70	66	+0.06
Example Email 3	43	49	-0.14

These examples highlight the importance of context when interpreting the scores.

Implementing an Email Quality Score

Adding the email quality score to your program is very simple. Just calculate the score using the formula listed above. If you can, automate this process in your email platform, your reporting dashboard, or even in a reporting spreadsheet. That will save you time and ensure the score is calculated consistently without errors.

Our Experience Over Two Years of Usage

Since 2022, we’ve implemented this metric for our largest client in the windows and doors industry. Here is what we’ve learned over the last two years.

Gauging Effectiveness

You can easily gauge the effectiveness of individual content compared to others in the same content theme without having to compare multiple metrics. This streamlined approach simplifies performance evaluation.

Context Matters

Look at the context of the email campaigns you are evaluating to make sure it is an apples-to-apples comparison. For example, promotional emails sent to a larger audience are going to have a different score than triggered customer journey emails. Understanding the nuances of each campaign type is crucial for accurate interpretation.

Correlation with Lead Gen

We noticed a weak correlation between higher email quality scores and higher lead generation. Despite being a positive correlation, the relationship is statistically not strong enough. While the email quality score is valuable, it should be used alongside other metrics to get a complete picture of campaign performance.

Internal Benchmarking

After the first quarter of usage, we established our own internal benchmark for email quality score to ensure what we’re delivering to the audience is what they actually want, even if they aren’t converting on that particular email. Setting your own benchmark will help in maintaining consistency and measuring improvements over time.

Practical Tips for Using Email Quality Score

• Relevance by Segment: Different segments will likely respond differently to the same content. Use the email quality score to help analyze performance within and across segments to tailor your content more effectively.
• Test, Test, Test: The email quality score can help you quickly identify which AB test variations are more successful from an engagement standpoint.
• Monitor Trends: Tracking your email quality scores over time helps to identify trends like changing audience preferences, so you can adapt your strategy accordingly to keep up.
• Use with Other Metrics: While the email quality score is valuable, you still need to combine it with other metrics like click rates, conversion rates, revenue per email, and customer feedback to give you a fuller picture of your email performance.

Conclusion

Navigating the post-Apple MPP landscape has posed challenges for email marketers, especially when trying to accurately gauge audience engagement.

Using an Email Quality Score can help provide a more reliable measure by balancing positive and negative audience signals. Our years of experience using this metric has shown its value in delivering actionable insights, helping us refine content strategies and better align with our client’s audience's preferences.

As we continue to adapt and innovate in response to market and industry changes, adopting a metric like the Email Quality Score can be a useful tool for maintaining and enhancing email marketing effectiveness.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash