Get Direction From Your Data
Turns out, yes! The new definition of spam is, “Is this email likely to be engaged with?” rather than simply, “Is this email unrequested?” As we’ve covered here and here, engagement is the name of the game in 2019, which means deliverability is more important now than ever. Amy Chin-Lai goes in-depth in this Medium article about email deliverability, what it means and how to improve your organizations’. It’s a good one.
One of my favorite shows, The Great British Baking Show, is back on Netflix. While watching this season, it struck me that host Paul Hollywood seemed to mostly give handshakes — a reward for a contestant’s top-quality baking — to men. Investigating this theory led me down a data rabbit hole.
First, I found Buzzfeed documenting all of Paul’s handshakes. But Buzzfeed wasn’t quite giving the whole picture because women tended to go father in the competition than their male counterpoints. Then, I found Wikipedia graphing how individual contestants performed. This would make it possible to chart the ratio of male/female handshakes for individual episodes! I had to cut myself off there, though (my husband wanted to finish the episode).
Although my current theory remains unproven, I was impressed by the data already available online. Do you have any theories you’ve been longing to prove?
This was such a great article to read, especially with the news of Instagram hiding “likes” swirling around. While measuring engagement is helpful for reporting purposes, it’s important to think about engagement as more than just “likes.” This article got me pondering the importance of looking at content as a whole package — rather than a single post or article — and how to quantify those important intangibles, such as thought provoking-ness.