While I cooked breakfast this morning after an intense gym sesh, I turned on one of my favorite daily podcasts: DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers.
I’ve written about DK before: In a dying industry of local sports media and physical newspapers, he branched out on his own and created his own local sports media company. He’s always pumping out good content on Pittsburgh’s three professional sports teams.
But today, he said something I’ve repeated often in these daily-ish musings of mine.
Checky:
DK’s topic for his podcast today was all about TJ Watt (the Steelers top edge rusher and mayhap the best in the entire league) and Myles Garrett (the Browns top edge rusher and mayhap the best in the entire league).
In the football world, there’s a lot of debate about who’s better between TJ and Myles.
On one hand, TJ nearly breaks the sack record every year. He always finishes the season with more sacks, fumbles, and interceptions than Myles. And while TJ only won Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) once, he should’ve won it at least one more time—and the more accurate number is two or three more times (but since he’s JJ Watt’s brother, and because JJ won DPOY three times, they’re more hesitant to give it to TJ—a story for another day).
On the other hand, Myles won the most recent DPOY (at the time of writing this). And while he doesn’t get sacks, fumbles, or interceptions—y’know, things that actually matter in a football game—he does do something that makes all the stat guys fap: Pass rush win rate.
Think of pass rush win rate like open rates for email:
It’s a semi-advanced stat that is a projection of how good a player is. But it starts and stops at a projection. Every time you beat your opponent, you’re rewarded a pass rush win rate. Just like every time your subject line makes someone open your email, you’re awarded an open.
Problem is, the pass rush win rate only clocks whether you beat your opponent or not. Just like an email clocks whether someone opens or not. But this projection stat stops there. So, despite TJ “finishing the play” more often (which is to say: making the sack, the reason the projection stat even exists to a big extent) Myles has a better pash rush win rate (which is to say: he beats his opponent, but it doesn’t result in a sack).
Email translation:
TJ would be the type of email marketer to hyperfocus on sales and revenue, y’know, the things that actually matter to an email and business. And Myles would be the type of email marketer to hyperfocus on opens, which doesn’t always translate to sales and revenue.
Back to DK…
He said it brilliantly when he said the following in today’s podcast:
(This is a direct transcript from YouTube using that trick I learned you up about recently… so don’t mind any grammatical errors.)
“Statistical analysis always leans toward the predictive numbers that could, theoretically, forecast how a player will do over the longer term. The mistake that the PFF people made forever ago was confusing these two things. If they had stuck with pass rush win rate as a predictive stat, which is all it is, rather than grossly overvaluing it arguably for their own biased interest. they'd have really been on to something and might even have helped people understand football better. Instead of just flagrantly discrediting themselves and everything that they do with this preposterous notion that pressures are somehow important than sacks. It's insanity.”
And so it is with email:
Just replace “sacks” with “sales” and “pass rush win rate” with “opens” and this same exact scenario plays out in email marketing circle jerks.
In other words: Email copywriters who endlessly ramble on about opens are probably biased towards opens because they know their emails don’t do diddly in terms of leading to sales.
Worst part?
Basing your email strategy off of the stoopid opinions of the crop of email marketers who solely focus on opens will swindle shekels right out of their bank account.
Because opens aren’t sales.
You can’t go to your bank and show your teller how many people opened your email if nobody actually took out their credit card and paid.
Moral of the story?
Beware of sexy stats and statistical analysis.
They’re usually biased.
And if they were so “crucial” as many email jabronis make ‘em out to be, well, they’d be called sales and revenue.
Speaking of sales and revenue…
If you wanna make more sales and more revenue with each email you send, hit reply, and let’s chat.
John “TJ” Brandt
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