Right now, notice the double standard:
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On social we track reach and impressions
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On paid we track impressions and frequency, and we pay real money specifically to be seen.
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Nobody judges a billboard on its click rate.
Then email arrives, and we judge it purely on the conversion.
That's an accident of history. Email was measurable early, so the industry built its evaluation around opens and clicks, not because they mattered most but because they were available.
We didn't measure what mattered; we made what we could measure matter.
Your new email mindset:
Zajonc, 1968: simply being exposed to something repeatedly improves your attitude towards it. It works even when the exposure is subliminal.
Which means the unopened email is still doing work. Your name in someone's inbox, week after week, is building recognition whether or not they open it.
Try this. Without thinking, who turns up in your inbox the most? (if you say me, not sure if a good or bad thing lol).
So report what the channel actually does:
→ Inbox reach. How many real people you reached. Not sent to. Reached.
→ Inbox impressions. Total times you landed in front of someone.
Both depend on placement. Around 15% of a typical send never arrives, so a sixth of your awareness is spent on impressions that never happened. A paid team losing a sixth of their impressions would call a crisis meeting!!
Email is not a channel that closes every week on command. It's a channel that builds demand, and then closes when someone's ready.
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