Collecting Data

Published: June 8, 2022

Mark Robbins

EMC Admin

A number of projects we are working on require us to analyze real emails being sent on an on-going basis. We could not find a single data source that meets our criteria. That’s why we have recently started a new project to collect email data with the help of our good friends and sponsors at Parcel.

We are now in the process of collecting emails from as wide a range of industries, countries and languages as possible. We have already collected more than 10,000 emails from over 840 unique root domains. We intend to continue collecting more as this data will help us in providing real insights on a regular basis. This is where our other projects can take advantage of this data.

Data Diversity

A lot of data we see used in email reports is often skewed to a western audience. Collecting emails from the west alone is not going to give us the full picture of the real state of HTML emails. That’s why we are making an effort to diversify our data.

Sender tools play a big role in the final HTML code sent to end users. We realize different sender tools are used in different industries and in different areas around the world. This could be by choice, or due to availability.

In addition, coding practices and what is considered important could vary in different parts of the world. For example, while there has been a big push for accessibility in the west in recent years, this may not be considered important everywhere. We cannot make many assumptions at this stage, but we should have a better understanding soon as we move closer to the analysis stage.

Our Accessibility Report Project

We’re running this project alongside the team at Parcel. 

The goal of the Accessibility Report project is to provide us with insight into the current state of email accessibility. We aim to track changes over time to see how it progresses, similar to the WebAIM Million report for websites.

Join the accessibility report discussion

The Email Platform Status project

We are working on this project alongside EMC member Rémi Parmentier and his team at Tilt Studio. The Email Platform Status project is an existent project that EMC is contributing to. 

The Email Platform Status project evaluates HTML emails and calculates the use of HTML/CSS features within these emails. This will help answer questions on what coding techniques people are using? At what rate is modern code being adopted? And looking at how the industry is changing over time.

Join the email platform status discussion

Other Projects

We may use the same data source in other projects as well. If you have an idea on how we can utilize this data further, please get in touch.

How can you help?

Our main priority with this project at the moment is gathering data. We need as wide a range of emails as possible. So please, add this email address to your email lists along with any other lists you can think of. We want as many languages as possible and as many industries, both big and small.