Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing forms out there! Because of that, many people might feel that it’s a bit outdated. Well, they don’t know what they’re missing out on! Email campaigns are still widely used and can have excellent conversion rates if executed adequately. Nowadays, there are many ways to find someone’s email address, so the targeting potential and ROI of email campaigns are high. That is why marketers are always looking for ways to increase their email engagement to maximize profits!
According to Oberlo, around 294 billion emails were sent in 2019, and that number will only keep growing! They estimate it will be well over 347 billion in 2022. We understand that you might still be skeptical. After all, you’ve likely received thousands of email promotions yourself over the years and have grown sick and tired of them. Yes, there are many companies out there who email bomb their customers with boring, unoptimized, and unimaginative email newsletters. But that doesn’t mean you have to be one of them — what you should do instead is stand out from the crowd.
Luckily, that’s what we’re here to help you with. If you feel demoralized and have noticed that your email campaigns have been stagnating, you’re in the right place! We prepared seven actionable tips you can use to increase your email engagement rates. But before we get to them, let’s quickly go over some basic email marketing terms for all the laypeople out there.
What Is Email Engagement?
When it comes to what email engagement is, the definition isn’t arbitrary. However, what most marketers look at when talking about email engagement is the following:
- Email open rate
- Clickthrough rate
- Conversion rate
These are just the metrics marketers pay the most attention to. But how do you measure whether your email campaign was successful? The answer lies in how you define success. Does it entail improving your sales? Are you more interested in customers visiting your site? Or do you want to find out who read your email to do audience research? You can use these and many other questions to determine what success means to you. After that, you can value these metrics and alter your campaign accordingly.
In other words, setting precise goals and optimizing your emails to meet them is essential to forming a successful email campaign!
Why You Should Practice Email Marketing
There are many reasons marketers shouldn’t neglect email marketing, but we’ll just list a few of the most obvious ones:
- Cost vs. ROI is excellent
- It’s an easy way to reach a broad audience
- Email is an open platform (it’s highly accessible)
- It’s convenient and personal
Aside from the general notions above, there’s been a spike in email conversion and engagement rates since the beginning of March 2020, according to BounceX. That comes to show that email as a marketing channel is still as lucrative as ever. That should make it clear that it’s never too late to jump on the email marketing train.
But how do you make the most out of this accessible marketing channel? How do you maximize your email engagement rates? Let’s find out!
7 Tips to Increase Your Email Engagement
Here are our seven tips you can implement today to boost your email engagement rates and achieve excellent ROI:
1. Target Your Audience Strategically
Email blasting all your newsletter subscribers is undoubtedly the easiest way to approach your newsletters, but it’s far from optimal. Why? It’s quite simple:
- Those emails aren’t personalized
- They often feel spammy
- They are unclear
Instead of opting for an easy way out by email blasting all of your subscribers, you should strategically engage. That means you should collect data on your users and send them personalized emails. What does that mean? It means you should tailor your email content to their hobbies, interests, purchasing habits, etc.
Here’s an example — why not send a conveniently timed discount to someone who just abandoned their shopping cart on your website? What about sending a new-goods update to the users who recently browsed that particular product category?
As you can see, there are plenty of possibilities; you just have to put in some extra work, but it can make a world of difference!
2. Include Engaging Visuals and Write Compelling Subject Lines
Improving your email’s visual game and its subject line are both fantastic ways to boost your engagement rates, but let’s start with the first thing your users will see.
Email Subject Line
Nobody will click on your email if your opening line is dull and unimaginative. But how do you make it less so? Here are a few tips to help you write clickable subject lines:
- Keep it short
- Make it intriguing
- Offer users value (a discount or a coupon)
- Use emojis (56% of brands who use them saw higher open rates)
- Use all capital letters to emphasize key points
- Personalize the subject line (these have 50% higher open rates)
Aside from all of the above, there’s one more thing you should never do — clickbait. This method might work in some industries, but clickbaits provide poor results when it comes to driving conversions. If you use them, you will boost your open rates, but your conversions are unlikely to go up.
Visuals
Many marketers neglect email design in their campaigns, which is detrimental to their success. Humans rely on perception heavily — that is a fact. So including visuals in your newsletters should be a must!
Just take yourself as an example — have you ever received a bland, text-only newsletter? If so, did you want to read it? Yeah, probably not.
You’d be surprised how many marketers still neglect the visual aspect of their email campaigns. Nowadays, anyone should be able to insert a few images here and there at the very least. Even such a small change can visibly increase your email engagement.
But if you have a graphic designer or are skilled at the craft yourself, you should try using movement in your emails. Even if you are a novice, you can always take advantage of those user-friendly drag and drop email builders to make your emails more engaging and visually appealing!
Ultimately, taking advantage of videos or GIFs is what you should aim for. Did you know that including a video in your email can raise your clickthrough rate by 300%? That’s right! So don’t miss out on the opportunity to use this visual content marketing strategy to up the success of your email campaigns.
3. Provide Value
This point should be a given, but you’d be surprised how many marketers miss the mark. One of the first lessons industry professionals learn is that your campaigns and products must provide value for your users. If they don’t, nobody will be interested in buying them or interacting with your brand.
The same principle applies to email marketing. The next time you want to send an email campaign, stop and ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with that email. If a clear answer doesn’t immediately come to mind, perhaps you should reconsider!
Overall, most experienced marketers would advise you to send email campaigns only when you have something valuable to say. In other words, don’t make email campaigns just for the sake of it! That is a surefire way of losing your audiences’ interest in your emails, which will reflect negatively on your long-term goals.
4. Use Social Proof
If you’re wondering how to increase email engagement, social proof is a potent tool because people rely more on emotions than facts when making decisions. That is why knowing that others have done something before you or hearing a personalized story about someone’s experiences makes people more likely to pick up on your brand’s message.
This tactic has proven incredibly effective not just for marketers but in many other industries as well. For example, this method is also widely used in politics for winning over the masses. So why shouldn’t you utilize it?
Add some customer testimonials to your newsletter or drop a well-known name as an example of someone using your product. You can also include some concrete numbers or statistics too! These kinds of emails are a steadfast way to increase your email engagement rates, so you’d be remiss not to use them.
5. Offer Your Users Convenience
Newsletters are going to be most effective if they make your customers’ lives easier. After all, so many things bombard the average person 24/7 that all they want to do at the end of the day is wind down and rest; they’re not going to bother reading your newsletter if it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Luckily, you can circumvent that by offering something new and convenient. That way, you will keep their attention long enough. But what do we mean by convenient? Here are a few examples:
- Send them different formats of your content (audio, video, pdf, etc.)
- Highlight the crucial parts of the text
- Send them a summary or a cheat sheet of your latest piece of content
Trust us; your subscribers will be grateful! And not only that, but you’ll also stand out from the crowd. That way, they’ll be more likely to open your emails again, the next time you send them.
6. Include a Call to Action
If you want your subscribers to act, whether it’s by downloading something, visiting your website, following you on social media, leaving a comment, or anything else… tell them! Being direct can take you a long way, so don’t underestimate the power of a CTA.
An excellent example of a quality CTA would be to provide a download or a page link in the email body or a redirect to an event marketing page if your newsletter’s purpose is to promote it.
7. Request Feedback
Our final tip for increasing email engagement might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people forget to incorporate it! But what makes asking for feedback so effective? Well, multiple things:
- It establishes a line of communication with your consumers
- Feedback is one of the most non-intrusive ways of engaging your subscribers
- It shows that you care
But what if they never respond? It doesn’t matter; according to research by Return Path, even if your subscribers don’t reply, they’ll be 45% more likely to engage with what you send them next.
And if you do receive feedback, well, good for you! Now you can hear what your customers think of your products or marketing and can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Send, Engage, Profit!
We hope you found our tips for increasing email engagement rates insightful. Now that you’re armed with this knowledge, do you feel you’re ready to get your email marketing campaign rolling?
Best of luck to you!
