What is Email Engagement? 11 Best Strategies to Increase It in 2024

Today, Email Marketing plays an important role as it helps you connect with your targeted audience better and more on a personal level, which becomes way crucial for every entrepreneur out there seeing the high level of competition in the market. 

But effective marketing via Emails seeks high Email engagement as well because what’s the benefit of creating and sending out tons of Emails if the majority of them go ignored by the subscribers, right? 

Before we go further, let us first make it clear to you what Email engagement actually is.

Email engagement is the level of interaction between subscribers and your Email marketing campaigns. 

In simpler words, it is a measurement of the interaction your Emails get from their receivers. One might ask “Okay, that’s fine. But how can one find Email engagement?” Well, there are certain metrics for that, which we are going to discuss now.

What is Email Engagement?

Email engagement refers to the level of interaction between an email sender and receiver. It refers to the ability of a business or individual to connect with their target audience by creating an email that resonates with them. 

An email with high engagement rates indicates the recipient is interested and engaged with the delivered content. In contrast, the opposite is true for an email with lower engagement rates. 

Email engagement metrics, also known as Email marketing metrics, can easily help you get a measurement of the level of interaction your Email marketing campaign has with its targeted audience. Below, we have given a few major metrics, so give them a close look. 

1. Email Open Rate 

Email Open Rate measures the percentage of subscribers who open a specific Email out of the total number of subscribers. This metric becomes important because your effort in the content creation and everything won’t matter if the audience doesn’t open the Emails in the first place and this is the reason many companies consider it to determine the success of their Email marketing campaigns. 

When it comes to the average Email open rate, that varies with different industries. To give you a figure, it usually stays between 20-25% but the higher it is, the better results you can expect. So, aim high.

2. Click Through Rate

Click Through Rate (CTR) measures the percentage of subscribers who click on a link within your Email’s content. What makes it significant to track is it tells you about the share of your audience that is interested in your content over time. Just like Email Open Rate, the average CTR can be different for different industries but a good CTR should be around between 2-5%.

3. Unsubscribe Rate

Unsubscribe Rate, an Email engagement metric, talks about the number of subscribers who opt out from receiving further Emails from your side. To find it out, you can divide the number of subscribers by the number of Emails sent by you. Always try to keep it as low as possible, like under 0.5 percent, which signals a healthy Email list with engaged subscribers.

4. Click Map 

There can be more than one link in your Email content and if you want to monitor the number of clicks on each of them, then the Click Map metric is absolutely the right choice for you. With Click Map, you get to know about the parts of your Email content, which are most engaging for your targeted audience.   

Now that you know about the most commonly used metrics to track Email engagement or we say the development of your Email marketing campaigns, it’s time to learn about the best strategies to make your Email more appealing and engaging for your targeted audience to get better results. 

11 Best Strategies to Increase Email Engagement 

1. Make Your Subject Line Interesting

‘First Impression is the Last Impression’ This may not be true for every instance out there but when it comes to Emails, this holds water very well. And here, by first impression, we mean the subject line of your Email because the open rate of your Email marketing campaign depends a lot on it. 

Therefore, try to make it as interesting and appealing as possible as it gives you a perfect opportunity to leave a good impression on the subscribers and ensure your Emails stand out in the crowd of personal, professional, and promotional emails. 

So now the question arises, ‘How to write an exceptional subject line to increase Email engagement?’ The answer is to keep it concise, and to the point, and leave some room for curiosity to make subscribers want more to read. 

Go through the down below points for a better understanding –

• Clear and concise – Try to keep it between 30-40 characters, which tend to perform best as Emails with such subject lines have higher open rates and click-through rates than others.
  
• Use words that imply urgency – If your Emails are about new launches, discount offers, or likewise purposes, then try to establish some sort of deadlines there to inspire a sense of urgency that can urge your subscribers to complete the desired action.
  
• Never use spam traps – Spam texts may get you some short-term success but forget about the long ones. In fact, they can be more harmful than beneficial, therefore, avoid using them.
  
• Do personalization – Who does not like or appreciate the extra attention, right? Therefore, try to personalize when possible. You can use the name of the subscribers, their locations, preferences, and interests, to make the subject line a bit exclusive and memorable to them.
  
• Make it sound fun – Everything’s alright but it gets better if you make your subject line a bit fun for its reader. You can think of adding some humor, where there is a space for it. This may help you create a difference and help you have an edge over others. 

2. Make the Most of the Email Preheader Text 

Email Preheader text, a small line of text that comes after the Subject line, also plays a crucial role. In fact, both these should resonate with each other and work together for the success of your Email marketing campaigns. 

The significance of Preheader text is it can help subscribers get a preview of the Emails, helping them to get an idea of the inner content and also contribute to the open rate. 

Now comes the part about the best practices to make Email Preheader text effective – 

• Add key details to supplement the subject line.
• Leave a hint of curiosity to grab the attention of Emails recipients. 
• Tease an incentive to urge subscribers to open Emails. 
• Personalize the Preheader text using the information, like the needs and interests of the subscribers.
• Use Emojis and humor to attract Email subscribers.

3. Create a Powerful Email Call to Action 

Every Email has certain goals or purposes and CTA (Call to Action) is one of the elements that help you achieve them. The way you write and design your CTAs keeps a great influence on email engagement and that’s why it becomes important to put enough effort in this area.

Below are a few factors you should consider to create an effective Email CTA to increase the number of clicks and conversions –   

• Number – “The more, the Better” if you think that’s the case with CTAs, but let us assure you this may not generate the expected results in every case. It’s true with my CTAs, you try to give subscribers more options to engage with Email but at the same time, it becomes important to maintain a balance there.
  
• Placement – Where you place the CTA also becomes crucial here. Usually, it’s best if the subscribers can see it without scrolling down and that’s why you can consider putting it strategically on the top half of the page.
  
• Design – It’s important that your CTA stands out from the rest of the content and that requires you to design it carefully. For that, you can do several things, like create a button, pick a unique color, use a big font size, keep it short & clear, etc.

4. Create Effective Email Copy 

For your Email copy to be engaging, it must be something that the subscribers would like to read and this is not an easy task as it seems. Otherwise, every other company would be using tools available in the market to write it. 

Creating effective Email copy is about giving it a human touch and keeping it fun. To make Email content interactive, write it as you normally talk and concisely because nobody likes to go through boring, serious, large chunks of text. 

There are a few tips that you can take into practice to write Email Content, like getting personal, avoiding industry jargon, choosing easy words, maintaining relevance, and keeping things short and concise. 

5. Ensure Every Email Element is Mobile Friendly 

There are over half a billion smartphone users alone in India and when such is the case, you can’t afford your Email marketing campaign to be mobile unfriendly. And this becomes way more important with 68% of email campaigns being opened on a mobile device at present. Today, mobile responsive Email designs are a must, not just a nice thing to have. 

The followings are the tips to optimize Emails for mobile –

• Use responsive Email templates that automatically organize your content based on the size of the viewers’ devices.
• Keep the subject line short, just as we have mentioned in the above step.
• Do formatting of the Email content in a way to make it easy to read for its readers. You can use short paragraphs, headers, bullets, and numbered lists.
• Keep the size of links big and set them apart.
• Pay attention to analytics to make adjustments to Email content accordingly. 

6. Perform Email A/B Testing

Not every move you make in marketing will go as per your expectations and this applies to Emails as well. Email marketing demands you try new things and if any problem arises, then sort it out and move ahead. 

In Simple terms, It is about trial and error. A/B testing Email campaigns can be quite beneficial here, which includes testing different versions of every Email element and analyzing their performance.   

With A/B testing, you can get a better understanding of the preferences and interests of your target audience. And the better you understand them, the higher the Email engagement you can get.

7. Effectively Segment Your Email List

Sending Emails about beauty products to men won’t get you the expected results. Similarly, welcoming Emails won’t interest the section of already established customers. What we are actually trying to say is, the preferences and needs of customers can be different and that’s why you need to segment them accordingly. 

This way, you will be able to send them relevant content and get higher Email engagement. There are many factors you can keep in mind for Email segmentation, such as geography, gender, age, job function, past purchases, interest level, etc. 

8. Send Standout Welcome Emails to Engage Customers 

Everyone appreciates a bit of special treatment and one of the ways to provide that is to send your new customers a welcome Email. And, we are not saying this out of the air as you see the average open rate for welcome Emails stands at over 50%, which is much more than regular Emails, like newsletters. 

Furthermore, 76% of people expect to get a welcome Email immediately after subscribing to a brand, and the people who get it are more willing to engage and interact.  

9. Add Interactive Elements in Email

Everyone’s putting in hard work for the success of their Email marketing campaigns, but not all get it. So, what’s the differentiator? We would say adding creative and interactive elements in your Email content to grab the attention of its readers and urge them to engage with it. 

Think about which Email elements we are talking about. Well, for a few you can count videos, animations, games, polls, quizzes, etc. These not only will help your Email design stand out but also entertain the readers, which will further increase Click Through Rate and Conversion Rate.

10. Make the Most of Transactional Emails

What are transactional Emails? They are the Emails that you send to people when they perform an action on your website or application, such as making an order, resetting their password, or abandoning their E-commerce shopping carts. 

And, you’d be surprised to know that they are only next to Welcome Emails when it comes to open rates. Many companies fail to take advantage of this fact as they revolve the theme of Transactional Emails only around the actual transaction. 

You better not commit this mistake. Check your customers’ personas, build some value propositions, and use that to optimize your Email copy.

11. Add Social Proofs

For every brand out there, the products and services it offers are great and we assume such is the case with you as well. But what about the proof for this? What do your customers say about them? If you seek to boost Email engagement, then including social proof or customer feedback on the content is a great idea. 

This way you can give assurance to the subscribers about the credibility of your brand and present the ways it has made a beneficial impact in their lives. 

Conclusion

Now we hope you know all you need to increase Email engagement, be it interesting subject lines, mobile responsive Email design, organized content, or adding social proofs. However, all these strategies you see are not easy to follow as they may take a lot of effort and time. So, what’s the solution? 

The answer is an effective Email marketing tool and if you don’t know which one to choose, then NotifyVisitors is the most preferred right now. 

It offers you several features like dynamic content, attractive and responsive templates, extensive customization, timely messages, triggered emails, sequential autoresponders, helpful analytics, and more to make your Emails more engaging.

FAQs

1. What is Email Engagement?

Email engagement refers to the level of interaction between an email sender and receiver. It refers to the ability of a business or individual to connect with their target audience by creating an email that resonates with them. 

2. What are Some of the Key Email Engagement Metrics?

Here are some of the key email engagement metrics

• Email Open rate
• Click map
• Email click through rate
• Response rate

3. What are the Best Strategies to Increase Email Engagement?

Here are a few strategies to increase email engagement.

• Make Your Subject Line Interesting
• Make the Most of the Email Preheader Text 
• Create a Powerful Email Call to Action 
• Create Effective Email Copy 
• Ensure Every Email Element is Mobile Friendly 
• Perform Email A/B Testing
• Effectively Segment Your Email List
• Send Standout Welcome Emails to Engage Customers 
• Add Interactive Elements in Email
• Make the Most of Transactional Emails
• Add Social Proofs

Also Read:

• 23 Best Email Marketing Tools Compared
• 19 Best Email Marketing Software 2023
• What is Email Marketing? Definition, Type, and Benefits
• 10 Best Email Marketing Strategy for Successful Campaign
• 13 Email List Management Best Practices & Tools