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If you’re an email marketer, you can relate to the fact that finding techniques to engage email subscribers feels more challenging than mastering quantum physics.
We used to feel the same way until countless hits and trials enabled us to figure out how to engage email subscribers like a pro.
So, if you’re about to create a new email marketing strategy or improvise your current one, read this article to make your next email marketing campaign a total hit.
For starters, let’s discuss what email engagement is.
What Is Email Engagement?
Email engagement measures how your subscribers engage with your email. This engagement can be in the form of opening, clicking, or reading your email.
How Can You Measure Email Engagement?
You can measure the performance of your email campaigns in solid figures with the help of the following key performance indicators (KPIs);
Click-through rate
Measures the percentage of email recipients who click on the link(s) in your email.
Open rate
It’s the percentage of people who open your emails out of your total subscribers. However, due to Apple's new privacy policies, open rates are no longer used to measure the success of email campaigns.
Click-to-open rate
Calculates the percentage of subscribers who clicked your email after opening it.
Bounce rate
Refers to the percentage of sent emails that don't deliver successfully to a person’s inbox. Bounce rate can further be divided into hard and soft bounces.
Hard bounce:
Indicates a permanent issue with why the email is not delivered. An email may hard bounce when:
- Recipient’s email address doesn’t exist.
- The domain name doesn’t exist.
- Recipient’s email server has completely blocked delivery.
Soft bounce:
Highlights a temporary issue behind an email delivery failure. If an email frequently experiences soft bounce, it will eventually be considered a hard bounce.
Some common reasons why an email may soft bounce are:
- A subscriber’s mailbox is full.
- Email recipient’s mailbox is inactive.
- Email size is too large.
- Domain name does not exist.
- Inappropriate email content caused email to block.
- Email fails to meet recipient’s server’s policies.
- Email does not comply with server’s anti-spam requirements.
Conversion rate
Refers to the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a certain link in your email and completed a desired action, such as making a purchase, updating a service, etc.
List growth rate
Measures the rate at which your email list is growing.
Return On Investment (ROI)
Measures how cost-effective your email marketing campaign is.
Unsubscribe rate
Refers to the percentage of email recipients who unsubscribed from your mailing list.
So these are the email marketing KPIs that can help you evaluate and track the performance of your emails. And if you wish to nail these numbers or metrics, implement the below-mentioned best practices to engage email subscribers.
How to Engage Email Subscribers With 15 Simple Tactics?
If you want to engage your email subscribers, you must humanize their experience, and you can do this in the following ways;
Understand your audience
Understanding your customers and their demands enables you to provide them with a great experience through emails. After all, they’d only enjoy engaging with your emails if they can relate to the email or if you offer them something of value.
1. Understand your subscriber’s likes and dislikes
You can understand your audience’s needs and demands by asking them questions in the form of feedback forms, customer surveys or questionnaires.
This will enable you to know their preferences, segment your email list and personalize your emails.
Understanding your customers also allows you to create better strategies in the future and fix any loopholes in your product or service.
You can take inspiration from this email from Grammarly;
2. Track your email recipient’s behavior and actions
Another effective way for understanding your subscribers is by tracking their behavior history and actions.
For example, if you’re a make-up brand and notice your customer purchasing mascaras a lot, you can send them an email featuring your next mascara collection with a special discount.
Impress your subscribers
We always say this, and we’d repeat it - impressing your subscriber is harder than impressing your crush. But if you follow the below-mentioned tips, you can easily do so.
3. Write captivating email subject lines
The subject lines of your emails should be super impressive and captivating. After all, 47% of subscribers open emails based on their subject lines.
You can make your subject lines attractive by using less than 50 characters, adding emojis or numbers, and personalizing them according to your different subscribers.
While writing a subject line, remember that your email is fighting for your recipient’s attention in an inbox full of other emails.
4. Create impressive email designs
You must design your emails to make your subscriber’s eyes pop (in a good way, obviously).
And if you’re thinking about how to do so, the answer is right here; design your emails with Unlayer.
Yep, that’s right. Unlayer allows you to create professional-looking and eye-catching emails in just a few clicks. Watch the following video and learn how to design a top-notch email with Unlayer in just a few clicks.
5. Add humor
If you feel that using humor in your emails is risky, then think again because 91% of people want brands to be funny.
In addition, when someone laughs, they release endorphins and dopamine - the happy hormones. So if you put your subscribers in a good mood by making them laugh, you also increase their chances of engaging with your emails.
6. Use a friendly tone
Your email copy has a significant impact on your email’s engagement rate.
You must write in a way like you’re talking to a friend. So try to keep your email copy conversational and avoid using technical words or jargon.
Remember that when it comes to writing emails, simple is better than smart because your subscribers won't interact with your emails if they don’t understand what’s written.
Make an effort to keep them engaged
Every relationship requires mutual efforts, so if you want your subscribers to engage with your emails, you must invest more by doing the following;
7. Send triggered emails
Triggered emails are sent in response to a specific action or behavior, such as sending a transaction email when a subscriber makes a purchase or an abandoned cart email when they abandon a cart.
They are the perfect example of sending the right email at the right time.
Since triggered emails are sent in response to your subscriber’s action, they will likely engage with your email. In fact, they generate 24 times more revenue per send.
So, if you still need to think about sending one, start doing it now.
8. Send re-engagement emails
Do you have subscribers who are ghosting you? Well, to be honest, we all do.
But there’s one simple trick to get them back in contact with you; by sending them re-engagement emails. Doing so will show your subscribers that you really care about them and increase their chances of interacting with you.
That’s like shooting two birds with one stone. So, ensure that you segment out subscribers who haven’t engaged with you in a while and send them re-engagement emails.
Here’s a cute-looking re-engagement email from Duolingo that you might want to look for inspiration.
9. Reply fast to queries or concerns
Your customers might have tons of questions and concerns, and you must cater to these timely.
If you postpone your response and send late replies, your customers will get frustrated, and your relationship with them will go south. So make sure you respond to them timely.
10. Send emails consistently
People often ignore the importance of sending emails at a consistent frequency. But what they don’t know is that consistent frequency increases brand awareness according to the exposure effect of email psychology.
For example, if you send your emails every Monday, your subscriber will start expecting emails every Monday soon and will most likely engage with them too.
Create a good email experience
A good email UX helps you win over your subscribers and increase user engagement. You can improve your email UX with the following measures;
11. Create dynamic email content
The feeling that something was specially created for you is quite surreal, and dynamic email content makes your subscribers feel that way.
Dynamic email content is a personalized segment of email that changes according to your subscriber’s demographics, or past behavior. For example, you can create email subject lines like “We offer the best deals in X.”
And this X is variable according to your subscriber location. So if your subscriber is reading your email in California, his subject line will become “We offer the best deals in California.”
12. Send personalized emails
In the world of email marketing, relevance is the key to success.
You can personalize the content of your email according to your subscribers interests and behavior. For example, if your subscriber loves purchasing dresses, you can send them an email showcasing your new dress collection etc.
If you don’t pay attention to the personalization of emails, the chances of your subscribers engaging with you will decrease, and they might even ignore your emails in the future.
13. Use simple and effective CTAs
Your email’s Call To Action (CTA) leads to conversions. So, it would be best if you gave it all the attention in the world.
Make sure that they are properly placed and well described. But avoid adding more than two CTAs per email, as they will make your email look unpleasant and confuse your subscribers.
Also, use contrasting colors for your CTA button to make it stand out among the rest of the email.
14. Clean your email list
We can't emphasize enough how important it is to clean your email list.
You can filter out all the email subscribers who have not engaged with your emails in a while. Also, try to identify email addresses that make your emails land in the spam folder.
You can use double opt-in forms to ensure that your subscriber list includes people who are actually interested in engaging with your emails. Moreover, you can set up a frequency for cleaning your email list.
For instance, you can clean your email list after every 2 months. A clean email list further improves your email deliverability rate and boosts your engagement rate.
15. Find the best time to send emails
You’re less likely to engage with someone if they talk to you when you’re not in the right mood, no?
The same goes for your email subscribers. So, make sure you choose the right time to send emails, and you can figure this out through A/B testing.
Once you incorporate all these tactics into your email marketing plan, you’ll notice a sweet change in the engagement rates of your emails.
Want To Engage Your Subscribers?
Conclusion
Time to take a sigh of relief because now you know all the answers to the million-dollar question of how to engage email subscribers.
Just implement the tips mentioned above, and you’ll notice how your subscribers have started engaging with your emails.
Good luck!
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