Finding a way to increase email engagement (or at least maintain it) is an ongoing struggle for all sorts of email marketers. The good news is, declining email engagement doesn’t have to be inevitable. You just have to find a way to keep things interesting.
But we hear you… easier said than done, right? In a romantic relationship, people are often the most engaged right after they literally get engaged. There’s a shiny diamond ring, the excitement of planning a wedding, and a bright future together. But eventually, reality sets in, and couples need ways to keep the romance alive.
Your relationship with subscribers isn’t much different. We’re not suggesting you need to start personalizing messages with cute pet names or schedule candlelight dinners. But there are dozens of other brands filling up your subscribers’ inboxes. What keeps people interested in your emails?
Let’s explore what contributes to a better email engagement strategy that keeps people opening and clicking.
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What is email engagement? Measuring email engagement Survey results on email engagement 5 ways to support an email engagement strategy Content quality Personalization Responsive email design Subject lines and CTAs Social media and email engagement How testing helps increase email engagement cover image for path to email engagement report Global Email Engagement
Find out about email habits around the world in Pathwire’s free report, The Path to Email Engagement.
What is email engagement? Email engagement is a term used to describe methods for measuring how subscribers interact with your emails. An engaged subscriber opens, reads, clicks, replies, converts, and becomes a loyal customer. An unengaged contact ignores your subject lines, deletes your emails, and eventually, they unsubscribe.
And let’s be clear, an unengaged subscriber may as well unsubscribe. You don’t need that kind of negativity on your list. However, maybe you could have done something more to earn their attention and gain their trust.
Measuring email engagement There are quite a few different ways to measure email engagement. The most common engagement metrics are the usual suspects: open rate, click-to-open rate (CTOR), and clickthrough rate (CTR), as well as total and unique clicks. These answer the basic question, “Are people opening our emails and clicking on links?”
However, open rates have never been a very reliable India Phone Number List vmetric for measuring email engagement. With the onset of changes from Apple Mail Privacy Protection, that’s become even more of the case. Measuring clicks is more important than ever.
The delete/glance, skim, and read rates of your campaigns are also useful email engagement metrics. They help you understand what’s going on in between an open and a click. These metrics are measured by the length of time spent dwelling on your email.
With email analytics from Email on Acid by Sinch
you can set specific thresholds for each metric. The default settings are:
Mailjet by Sinch and Ascend2 surveyed successful marketers for the exclusive report, Inbox Insights 2022. Results show their greatest concern is “increasing email engagement”, which topped the list with 46% citing it as a top 3 challenge.
An earlier Email on Acid Survey featured in our UAE Cell Number report, Success in the Inbox, found only increasing sales and leads surpassed increased email engagement as a top goal.
So, how can we overcome the challenges and achieve the goal of better email engagement? The Inbox Insights 2022 survey asked marketers to select the top three ways to improve.
