Email engagement is the most important metric in email marketing, by far.This statement is so true that 83% of US B2B marketers use email engagement to monitor the performance of the content they produce (eMarketer, 2023). And what’s the reason for this?
Well, we can say that, more than being able to deliver a lot of emails in the inbox, knowing if what is being delivered is pleasing the recipients’ preferences or not can be the difference between the success and failure of email marketing actions, whether for relationship or sales conversions.
Table of contents
What is engagement
In email marketing, engagement refers to the interactions and level of involvement of the recipients of email actions with the messages sent by a company.
This is a very important indicator of the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign, indicating satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the content offered.
Contrary to what you might think, engagement itself is not a metric, but a set of interaction metrics that together make up engagement, including:
- Opening rate: is the percentage of emails opened in relation to emails delivered. It serves as a benchmark for the level of interest that the subject line and the sender cause in the recipients.
- Clicks taxa (CTR): is the percentage of clicks on the links contained in the email in relation to the total number of emails sent (when calculated in relation to the total number of emails opened, it is called CTOR – click through open rate). This metric shows the level of interest that the content of the email generates in readers.
- Conversion rate: is the percentage of recipients who took a suggested action after clicking on one of the links in the email, such as filling in a form, making a purchase, etc. Here, the metric evaluates the impact of the email marketing campaign on the business objectives.
- Response rate: This is the percentage of recipients who decide to reply to the email. This indicates the recipient’s level of involvement with the company that sent the email.
So, based on this information, we can say that engagement is the totality of recipients’ interactions with an email.
Negative engagement
When we talk about interactions as a whole, we need to remember that there are not only positive interactions nos emails, but also actions that demonstrate descontentment of the recipient with what is received.
We can name three types of negative engagement:
- Opt-out (or deregistration): When the recipient comes to the conclusion that the content sent by the sender is no longer interesting or deviates from the initial information proposals, they can request to unsubscribe via the opt-out link in the email.
- Complaints (or spam complaints): if your frequency of sending messages is too high, your offers are not in line with your recipients’ preferences or you are sending emails indiscriminately to people who haven’t asked for them, you’ll end up with a lot of “mark as spam” triggers. This action is known as a “complaint”.
- Delete without reading: Another indication of negative interaction in email is the action of deleting the message without even reading its content, often motivated by the sender or subject line. Being automatically recognized by the recipient as the sender of inopportune or annoying content is bad for your online reputation. The company Airship states that 48% of consumers say they often delete or ignore emails from brands without even reading them.
The consultancy Gartner said that the 3 main reasons why people unsubscribe (opt-out) from an email list are:
- Lots of emails (53.5%),
- Repetitive or redundant emails (46.5%), and
- Subject lines that don’t match the content of the email (30.4%).
Email engagement: being liked is the key to success
All the interaction actions of the recipients are monitored by the email service providers in order to contribute to their analysis algorithms, which will ultimately define the destination of the email messages. The more positive the engagement, the better the deliverability, and vice versa.
So, obviously, any digital marketing manager should aim to get recipients to react positively to the messages and offers that are sent.
This is because when you are able to create a connection between what is sent and the people who will be impacted by the message, this converts into positive email engagement, leading to conversions.
Therefore, the ability to understand people’s preferences and carry out appropriate segmentation, along with the development of captivating subject lines and engaging content, is at the heart of quality email marketing, contrary to the belief that the more people reached by an email action the better.
Think about it for a moment: the statement “one size fits all” has no place in email marketing. The more personalized the messages (in terms of content and offers), the greater the chances of positive engagement.
Connection is the key word.
Why positive engagement is beneficial
- Increases authority: email providers monitor the behavior of their customers (the recipients) in relation to the messages they receive. If the algorithm sees that the recipients are moving in a positive direction, the provider will also behave positively towards the sender.
- Improves deliverability: as a result of positive engagement with interesting and timely emails, email providers’ algorithms often give higher reputation scores to senders (their sending IP addresses and domain). The consequence is the prioritization of inbox message delivery.
- Allows you to monitor behavior: the more interactions with your emails, the greater the chances of understanding your recipients’ preferences and thus developing better and better-targeted content. This will translate into higher conversions in the future.
- Allows trigger-based actions: having highly engaged contact lists, with lots of interactions, allows you to program interaction-based, or trigger-based, email actions. You can program emails that will only be sent when a recipient clicks on a specific link in a sent email. For example, sending an email to talk about the launch of a car, in which clicking on the link with details of the vehicle triggers a complementary email with an exclusive invitation to a face-to-face launch event or test drive, can result in even more engagement and positive connection with the brand.
Technical challenges of engagement today
Over the years, and with the evolution of practices to combat the spam and privacy protection, some technical challenges have become part of the daily life of those who run email marketing campaigns and whose open rate is an important engagement metric.
- GDPR and other regulations: privacy regulations require explicit consent from users for tracking, which can limit companies’ ability to monitor emails without consent.
- Apple MPP (Mail Privacy Protection): with the introduction of MPP in iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, hiding email opening activity from senders (since emails are preloaded by Apple servers), can result in inflated opening rates and inaccurate data about which users actually opened the emails.
- Image blockers: email accounts with default settings for not automatically loading messages prevent tracking pixels from being able to provide information. If the images are not loaded, the opening of the email will not be recorded.
- Anti-spam filters: there are anti-spam filters capable of identifying and removing tracking pixels before they reach the recipients, making it impossible to record the opening interaction.
There are companies looking to develop ways of circumventing tracking pixel blocking mechanisms, such as removing width and height attributes, inserting variable URL lengths, removing query parameters such as the question mark (?), among others. But none of them can guarantee that the opening rates will be completely true to reality.
The click is the new open rate
Since one of the main reasons for sending email marketing is conversion, whether it’s clicking on a link to access a blog post, filling in a registration form or even making a purchase, the open rate has started to have less of an impact on marketers’ analyses.
Some time ago, a opening rate has become more of a vanity metric, as this number can end up being inflated in various ways and not converted into real gains.
For this reason, the email marketing market has been treating click-through rates as “the new open rate”, since it is in the click that the greatest chances of conversion in email marketing lie.
Proof of this is that, at the end of 2023, the metrics most used by professionals to evaluate the effectiveness of promotional emails were click-through rates and conversion rates. (Statista research)
Secrets to super engagement
Well, by now we’ve understood some golden rules and fairly clear guidelines about email engagement:
- Positive engagement improves deliverability.
- Negative engagement, on the other hand, worsens deliverability.
- Timely, targeted and quality content increases interactions.
- Focus on opens (but don’t rely on fees) and clicks (here, yes!).
With these guidelines in mind, we can establish some tactics for success and more interactions in your emails.
Segmentation
Here, the saying “less is more” fits perfectly. We’re not saying to send fewer email campaigns, but to send emails to fewer people with each campaign.
In other words, the more focused on a theme or preference your email campaign is, the more niche your target audience will be. However, the chances of getting real engagement stimulated by the connection with the message will be much higher.
That’s why you can send several campaigns, but each with a specific focus and a well-segmented group of recipients.
Dedication to the subject line
It is a well-known fact in the market that 7 out of 10 people decide through the subject line whether an email message will be read or not.
That’s why there’s little point in dedicating yourself to producing a complex and well-planned email layout if the subject line is left in the background, or even ignored.
On the contrary, the 60 or so visible characters of the subject line must be planned with priority and total strategic commitment, as this is the element that will act as the message’s calling card and will define whether the email will be read. Bet on total transparency about the content, personalizations and emotional connections.
Pay attention to shipping times
According to HubSpot, in the US market, 27% of people said that the best day to send email marketing is Tuesday, followed by Monday (19%). And the best time to send emails (both B2C and B2B) is between 9am and 12pm.
This is a change from the trend that used to indicate Tuesdays and Thursdays as the ideal shipping days.
Obviously, we need to remember that trend is not the rule.
But keeping an eye on your recipients’ behavior and collectively mapping the times of interaction will help you understand when the ideal time is: when your recipients will be available and interested in reading your emails.
Bet on transactional emails
If there’s one category of email that’s almost guaranteed to get engagement, it’s transactional emails. After all, this is the type of email that recipients want.
Transactional email is necessary when there is a registration that requires a two-factor authentication confirmation and also for password recovery, purchase confirmations and so on. These are emails that need to be opened and read.
This is an excellent opportunity to build a positive reputation with email service providers, so that your future commercial or content messages have better deliverability results.
Conclusion
More than just ensuring that emails reach the recipients’ inbox, you need to understand whether the content you send is meeting their preferences and expectations.
Positive engagement not only improves deliverability, but also increases the sender’s reputation with ESPs, leading to better results in future campaigns.
On the other hand, negative engagement can be very damaging to online reputation and the effectiveness of communications.
This means focusing on segmentation strategies, personalization and the creation of relevant and timely content in order to attract and maintain the interest of recipients, converting interactions into concrete results.
FAQ
This is the level of interaction and involvement of recipients with the messages sent. This includes actions such as opening emails, clicking on links, replies and conversions. It is a set of metrics that together indicate the effectiveness of email campaigns and the satisfaction of recipients with the content they receive.
We can mention the open rate, which shows how many emails were opened; the click-through rate (CTR), which indicates the percentage of clicks; the conversion rate, which measures how many recipients took a desired action after clicking on the links; and the response rate, which reveals the percentage of recipients who responded to the email. Together, they provide a comprehensive view of recipient engagement.
Negative engagement refers to interactions that indicate recipient dissatisfaction, such as unsubscribing (opt-out), marking emails as spam (complaints), and deleting unread emails. These behaviors can damage the sender’s reputation and negatively affect the deliverability of future campaigns, resulting in fewer emails reaching the recipients’ inbox.
Regulations such as the GDPR require explicit consent from users for activity tracking, limiting companies’ ability to monitor openings and other interactions without permission. In addition, tools such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) can artificially inflate open rates by preloading emails on their servers, making it more difficult for senders to obtain accurate data on recipient behavior.
With recent changes, the open rate has become less representative of real engagement. The click-through rate, on the other hand, indicates a concrete and intentional action by recipients, better reflecting interest and interaction with the content of the email.