Putting aside hunches, gut instinct and other qualitative measurements it's important to understand what is Really Working... for your emails.
We need email meta-data reporting: I do this today manually... which takes several days to encode the data and then filter and report on it.
What is meta data reporting? Meta data reporting would look at the characteristics of our emails so we can learn what is really moving the needle! This is about comparing a large number of emails (vs. comparing 2 emails).
Questions that can be answerd with meta data reporting!
For English what has a better open rate subject lines with personalization vs. no personalization
What performs better, subjectlines with emojis and personalization, or just emojis?
Do emails with a send name that includes the company name perform better than others?
What is our click-through rate for transactional emails vs. prospect emails?
What is meta data for emails? (examples, not complete)
What language was it sent in?
Did the subject line have a personalization string
Did the subject line have an emoji
Also for the preview, etc.
Did the from name include the company name
What type of subscription (we have marketing info, and customer communications)