Why isn’t the Disaffection Index (DI) more popular with campaign marketers?

Many years ago, when self-proclaimed Email Diva and my own personal career doppelganger Melinda Krueger conceived of the Disaffection Index, my only qualms were with its name and acronym. She wrote about this campaign KPI in one of her MediaPost pieces. If I remember correctly, she even sent me a pre-read. I told her I loved the metric but predicted it would become more commonplace with campaign marketers if she gave it a TLA (three letter acronym). I was only half joking.

You be the judge. First, what is it?

Rather than unsubscribe / delivered, the DI is calculated by dividing unsubscribes by the response rate …

Calculated this way, the DI tells you how many people either a.) clicked on your e-mail for the sole purpose of getting off your list or b.) were so dissatisfied … they chose to unsubscribe.

Excerpt from “The New Unsubscribe Rate”

Today every subscriber and brand loyalist is worth too much to squander. So why isn’t this KPI on every campaign manager’s dashboard?

Last Click Index (LCI) to the rescue!

I humbly suggested at the time that LCI was a better term for two reasons. First, it adds drama. When someone unsubscribes, you’d believe you weren’t getting any more clicks from them. B*tch, bye!

And secondly, I had then and still have zero affection for the word disaffection. But it’s her baby, and a rose is a rose by any name. (Clever guy, that Shakespeare).

So if you’re a campaign marketer, start using it, regardless of its inferior name. You’ll thank me. And Melinda.

Melinda is currently an Associate Principal for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and I predict she will laugh heartily when she reads this. I do hope so. I miss talking shop with her!