Part one. The Message
Delivery system versus message
Sort every number you report into two piles. Most operations find one pile nearly empty.
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Take the last report you sent upward and sort every number in it into two piles. Delivery system: anything that would change if you altered where, when, how often or to whom something was sent, without changing a word of what it said. Message: anything that would change if you altered what was said, to the same people, in the same place, at the same frequency. Whether they can repeat your claim back. Whether they can say who it is not for. Almost every marketing report is entirely the first pile. That is not incompetence, it is availability. Delivery numbers arrive from the platforms and message numbers have to be gone and got. So when results fall, the available evidence can only support delivery explanations, and the answer is always more, cheaper, or more often.
Take the last report you sent upward and sort every number in it into two piles.
Delivery system: anything that would change if you altered where, when, how often or to whom something was sent, without changing a word of what it said. Reach, frequency, cost per thousand, open rate, click rate, bounce, deliverability, time on page.
Message: anything that would change if you altered what was said, to the same people, in the same place, at the same frequency. Whether they can repeat your claim back. Whether they can say who it is not for. Whether they chose you over the named alternative and could say why.
Almost every marketing report is entirely the first pile. That is not incompetence, it is availability: delivery system numbers arrive automatically from the platforms, and message numbers have to be gone and got.
The consequence is that when results fall, the available evidence can only support delivery system explanations, so the response is always more, cheaper, or more often. An operation can spend years optimising distribution for a message that stopped landing, and every review will conclude the plan is working.
You do not need many message numbers. Two or three, gathered deliberately, changes the shape of the conversation entirely.
Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything
Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.