How to Boost Your Email Engagement Metrics + A Pro Tip!

Email engagement is important because:

• Engaged subscribers are more likely to make purchases or take desired actions.
• When subscribers interact consistently with your content, they feel a stronger connection to your brand.
• It tells you what your customers like, helping you refine email campaigns.
• Email marketing is the most affordable way to reach a wide audience, and engagement demonstrates interest and potential for conversions or sales.
• It can set your brand apart from competitors.

But open rates have different meanings, depending on context; open rates can refer to:

1. Unique open rates: This notes a unique open by a unique subscriber.
2. Total open rates: This measures the total number of times an email is opened.
3. Robot open rates: These include opens by Apple Mail or Gmail to create AI previews or summarized notifications.

A good open rate reflects:

• Subject line effectiveness: A strong subject line can entice recipients to open the email, while a weak or unclear one may result in lower opens.
• Sender reputation: If you’re seeing a low open rate, it could your emails are landing in spam or being ignored. This may indicate deliverability issues or that recipients don’t trust your email sender name.
• Audience engagement: A higher open rate suggests that your audience finds your emails interesting or relevant, while a low open rate may signal a disconnect between the content you’re sending and your recipients’ interests.

If you’re seeing a low open rate, consider these steps to improve it.

1. Optimize email subject lines: Use clear, concise, and personalized subject lines that generate curiosity.
2. Adopt email personalization: Include the recipient’s name in the subject line or preview text to create a sense of personal connection.
3. Use an email segmentation strategy: Create specific groups based on interests, behaviors, or demographics.
4. Ascertain the best time to send emails: Experiment with different days and times to find when your audience is most likely to check their inbox.
5. Improve your email sender reputation: Consistently send high-quality, non-spammy emails and ask your subscribers to add your email address to a safe senders list.

The click-through rate (CTR) measures how many recipients clicked on the links in your email, which shows:

• Whether your content is engaging: A high CTR suggests that your content is engaging, and if it’s low, it means your content needs to improve.
• Whether the email content is relevant: If recipients are clicking through, the content likely resonates with their needs or interests. If not, it may need split testing.
• If your CTAs are effective: A clear and persuasive email CTA can drive higher clicks. A low CTR might indicate weak or unclear CTAs.

To improve CTR, you can:

1. Improve the CTA: Make your CTA buttons more prominent and use action-oriented language, like “Get Started,” “Download Now,” or “Learn More.”
2. Enhance email design: Use visually appealing, mobile-optimized designs with clear sections to make the email easy to navigate.
3. Personalize the content: Use dynamic content and segmentation to tailor messages to each recipient’s interests.
4. Implement A/B testing: Experiment with different link placements, colors, and wording to see what drives the most clicks.

This includes both soft and hard bounces:

1. Soft bounces: A temporary email delivery failure because of a full inbox, network issues, or server problems. This may have a minor negative impact on sender reputation.
2. Hard bounces: A permanent email delivery failure due to an invalid or nonexistent email address. A hard bounce can significantly damage sender reputation.

The bounce rate provides insight into the health of your email list:

• List quality: A high bounce rate indicates your contact list has outdated or invalid email addresses, which can harm your sender reputation.
• Delivery issues: Bounced emails may point to issues with your email setup or problems with the recipient’s server.
• Segmentation issues: If you’re sending emails to recipients who didn’t opt-in or who are inactive, your bounce rate may increase.

To lower your bounce rate, try these steps:

1. Email validation: Regularly remove invalid, inactive, or misspelled email addresses. Use email verification tools like ZeroBounce or Kickbox.
2. Use a double opt-in method: This helps ensure recipients genuinely want to receive your emails, leading to a more accurate email list.
3. Monitor bounces: Remove hard bounces immediately, and keep an eye on soft bounces (temporary delivery issues) over time.
4. Check blacklists: Check popular industry blacklists to see if you are blacklisted. If you are, follow the steps to get yourself delisted.
5. Authenticate your email domain: Set up proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) on your domain to improve deliverability.

Here’s what you can deduce from it:

• The effectiveness of your campaign: A high conversion rate means your email content, design, and offers are aligned with what your audience wants. A low rate may indicate dissonance between what you’re sending and what your audience wants.
• Your CTA relevance: If recipients are converting, your CTA and landing page must be closely aligned with the content and value offered in the email.
• Accuracy of targeting: High conversions reflect that the right people received the right message at the right time.

To boost conversion rates, try these 7 tips:

1. Align your CTA with landing pages: Ensure the landing page matches the offer in the email, providing a smooth and cohesive experience.
2. Send different types of email campaigns: Some emails work better than others. Understand what your audience likes more.
3. Use email A/B testing: Create segments for testing and uncover what your subscribers want by testing different email content and elements.
4. Offer value: Focus on the benefits and incentives that make taking the action (e.g., buying a product) irresistible.
5. Streamline the process: Make it easy for recipients to convert — reduce the number of steps required on the landing page.
6. Focus on targeted email marketing: Ensure your emails are being sent to a relevant, segmented audience to increase the likelihood of conversions.
7. Use urgency or scarcity: Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers or low-stock alerts to drive action.

Additionally, you can also infer from a high unsubscribe rate that:

• You may be sending irrelevant content: Your content is irrelevant to your audience, or you’re emailing too frequently.
• You aren’t matching audience preferences: Your email frequency or tone doesn’t align with what subscribers expect.
• Your list quality isn’t great: You’re not targeting the right people.

These steps can help reduce unsubscribe rates:

1. Use email segmentation: Send more targeted and relevant emails based on audience preferences, behavior, or demographics.
2. Adjust email frequency: Consider allowing recipients to manage their email preferences by offering options to receive fewer emails rather than opting out completely.
3. Improve email content: Continuously test different types of content (news, promotions, tips) to see what resonates with your audience.
4. Send mass personalized emails: Use personalization to make your emails more relevant and valuable to the individual.
5. Try re-engagement email campaigns: Send win-back campaigns to inactive subscribers to remind them of the value they get from your emails.

Spam complaints indicate the 4 issues listed below:

1. Your content is spammy: A high spam complaint rate suggests that recipients either didn’t find your content valuable or relevant or they didn’t recognize your email.
2. You’re sending too many emails: Emails that are sent too frequently end up getting reported as spam.
3. You’re selling too hard: If your messages contain overly aggressive sales tactics, your readers will file spam complaints.
4. Unclear opt-in: It’s possible that your subscribers were not aware they signed up for emails. Establish a clear signup process or use a double opt-in.
5. Poor email authentication: If there are issues with your DNS records and mailbox providers can’t verify your identity, you could get marked as spam.
6. Your ESP has a poor reputation: If you use a low-quality email platform to send emails, you could get hit with spam complaints.

To lower your spam complaint rate:

1. Only email those who explicitly opted in: Send emails to people who have opted in and are actively engaging with your content.
2. Improve your subject lines: Ensure your subject lines are honest and reflect the content of the email.
3. Set expectations: When users subscribe, clearly outline the type and frequency of emails they will receive in a welcome email campaign.
4. Simplify unsubscribing: Include a clear and visible unsubscribe link in every email to avoid frustration and spam complaints.

Follow these guidelines to improve email deliverability:

1. Use email authentication: Implement protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on your domain.
2. Use the double opt-in method: Confirm subscriptions to ensure recipients want your emails.
3. Use email validation: Remove invalid, unengaged, or bounced email addresses.
4. Follow email design best practices: Ensure there’s a good text-to-image ratio.
5. Segment your audience: Group subscribers accurately so you can send targeted emails.
6. Warm up your IP address: If sending from a new IP, start with low volume and gradually increase it.
7. Feedback Loops: Sign up for feedback loops with major ISPs to get notified when recipients mark your email as spam.
8. Easy unsubscribes: Provide a one-click unsubscribe link; it will help reduce spam complaints.
9. Reputed email platform: Choose an ESP with a good deliverability record, such as Campaign Refinery.