Email engagement measures the levels of interaction customers and potential customers have with your emails.
Multiple metrics can be tracked to ensure exceptional engagement including open rate, click rate, and conversion rate.
Email marketing takes a lot of time. And when leads aren’t engaging with your email marketing efforts, you find yourself wondering…
Why don't they like me?
What's wrong with me?
Will I ever get this right?
But what if we told you that improving engagement with email marketing has nothing to do with YOU…and everything to do with your audience?
Yes, you have marketing goals you want to hit. And yes, your email content should in some way relate back to you and what you sell. It should also contain W.I.F.M. (aka: “What’s in it For Me?”).
Because at the end of the day that is what your customer cares ACTUALLY about.
On the other hand, if your email marketing content brings little or no value to your customer (or it’s just plain boring or cliche), they stop engaging with your communications.
Thankfully, there are many ways you can provide your audience with value and ultimately reinvigorate your email list.
Consider your voice
Is the subject of your email receiving an action? That is, are you using active voice or passive voice when writing to them? Passive verbs like was, were, has been, and can be are useful—but they can also be overused. Passive voice weakens your copy…and numbs your audience. Not exactly the feeling you want to instill while trying to spark higher engagement.
Instead, try to start everything—from subject lines to subheads to paragraphs—with words that inspire action. This is also called active voice. Learn, discover, explore, and attract are all great examples of words that can start out your copy in a way that will ensure your audience takes notice.
If you struggle to come up with these kinds of words, try using a Thesaurus.
Get rid of unwanted leads on your list
It’s normal for some leads on your email list to become less engaged over time. From life changes to no longer being in need or want of what you offer, consider your leads to be like friends. Some stay in your orbit while others disappear—and it’s okay to let go of them.
Cleaning—also called scrubbing—an email list, especially the first time around, can be downright frustrating. Some people have ultimately archived half or more of their existing leads—yikes!
But when you want to see things like your open rate and click through rate soar, you’ve got to say goodbye to those leads who are no longer serving you well.
There are two great ways you can go about scrubbing your email list:
First, you could go through your list and one-by-one delete anyone that has low or no engagement. Many email platforms give leads a rating or a way to look at how they’ve engaged with you over time, enabling you to decide whether a lead should stay or be sent to the archives.
A second way to clean up your email list is to send a re-engagement campaign to your list. Generally, this campaign is a series of four or five emails containing a special offer or freebie. Those leads who open emails from this short, sweet campaign remain on your email list. Those who do not are moved to an archive. Space this campaign out over the span of about a week to ensure you give everyone on your email list a chance to engage—including those who may be busy or out of office.
Connect without motive
From small purchases to larger ones that require consideration, email marketing has shifted away from education and storytelling toward a “sell, sell, sell” mentality.
When your leads feel like a mere number on your email list, they stop engaging. It may be time to reevaluate your email outreach if the point of them seems to always revolve around selling something versus sharing insightful or lighthearted content including:
- Vulnerable moments
- Important lessons
- Funny stories
- Cat videos (or whatever makes sense)
It’s not necessary for every single email you send to have an ulterior motive. Sometimes, communication between two people should be exactly that—communication.
Instead, check in with your email list from time to time. You can gauge their current state through a survey or by inviting them to reply back. Then use that information to engage and further tailor future content to meet your audience where they are.
Tailor your communications
What is the persona of your ideal lead? If it’s not on the tip of your tongue, set aside time to sit down and write this out. Knowing exactly who your ideal customer is, what problem they need to solve, and how you can help them solve it is crucial to creating content they’ll engage with.
Also, consider that you likely have personas within your personas—and segmenting your email list accordingly can help you further customize your message.
For instance, consider a small family-owned jewelry store that sells luxury brand stones. Say the persona they target is an unmarried middle-aged woman with no children making over $250,000 annually. She owns her home and drives a luxury-brand vehicle.
But despite this persona, it’s likely that the small family-owned jewelry store has sold to other customers, too. Consider that a number of patrons have been married, wealthy, middle-aged men purchasing gifts for their wives.
The message being sent to these two personas will be vastly different. Oftentimes, businesses ignore this, sending the same blanket message to everyone thus causing their email list engagement to decline.
Also, consider that everyone from your elderly neighbor to your favorite cousin makes purchase decisions based on their emotions. Tailoring your email to those emotions—from subject line to body copy to graphics—can help determine whether or not they’ll engage with it and your business.
Engage regularly
You may have had the best of intentions in starting your email list. But sporadic and rare communication has caused many a list fall flat, leaving their owners wondering where all the engagement has gone.
When people sign up for your email list, it’s because they want to hear from you—the best version of you. And they want to hear from you regularly. So, it’s not a problem to send out non-boring email communication once, twice, or over three times a week. It all depends on what your customer likes. You know your customer best!
You should, however, make it a habit to send the same number and types of communications consistently week after week. This way your leads know when to expect to hear from you and may even be waiting for your email to arrive in their inbox, thus increasing email engagement.
At Data Axle™ USA we’re here to help you with a variety of email solutions. From building your own email list with a list of emails purchased from our U.S. Business or U.S. Consumer databases to creating unique marketing campaigns, to deploying them and tracking their success, a helpful marketing partner is ready to assist you.
