Engagement is the holy grail of your email marketing communication. This article will help you focus on the most popular engagement drivers.
What is engagement in email marketing?
It is one of the most critical metrics in email marketing. In this context, by engagement we mean whether our contacts open and click on the links in our emails.
Considering it a key metric makes a lot of sense, because when people open and click on links in a message, it probably means that they found it relevant, interesting and useful.
What drives engagement in email marketing?
There are many factors that contribute to contact engagement. The longer they have maintained their relationship with your brand, the more you can drill down into the details. However, we recommend focusing on the following three:
- RelevanceWhy should people subscribe to your email marketing communication?
- Call to actionDo your contacts know what you expect them to do? Do you plan each email with a clear call to action in mind?
- FrequencyAre you sending the right amount of information and are you in the sweet spot between not too little and not too much?
What is a segmented email campaign?
The mission of email marketers is to send the right messages to the right people at the right time. Mass mailing to all the contacts on your list does not provide the best business results. With all the marketing technology available today, this approach simply isn't good enough.
One of the techniques that involves a big leap towards engagement is segmentation. Segmenting a contact list is grouping your contacts according to their characteristics, needs and preferences.
Careful segmentation allows you to diversify your email marketing communication and send relevant emails to particular groups of contacts.
Based on behavioral data (clicks), you can determine the preferences of each contact and create segments accordingly. You can automatically identify and group contacts who, for example, are interested in products A, B or C for a certain age group, gender or behavior.
How to segment a contact list based on engagement
There are several ways to track contact engagement. One is through clicks. These clicks can be categorized based on an engagement score. Based on real-time data, we place contacts at a certain level of engagement, choosing from a 5-step scale:
Not engaged - not at all interested in the submitted content
At risk
Neutral
Committed
Highly engaged: actively reacts to messages, opens them and clicks on links.
What can you do with contact segments based on their engagement?
Looking closely at the level of engagement allows you to discover what's right and what's wrong with your email marketing. Scan for information and align your communication with the needs and preferences of your contacts.
You can then create emails for each group of contacts to increase their participation in the most relevant way.
- Uncommitted: Launch a reactivation campaign. Delete contacts that do not respond for a long time in order to maintain a proper hygiene of the contact list.
- At risk: Ask for their opinion. Maybe you should change something in your email marketing program.
- NeutralFind out what makes them click. You could personalize your communication even more.
- CommittedCheck why your email communication with these people is working for you.
- Highly committedSome of these people are your best customers and promoters. Think about how you could reward them (and don't forget to ask them for testimonials).
What are the benefits of engagement-based segmentation?
There are many benefits of engagement tracking and engagement-based contact segmentation. Here are three benefits that we find particularly noteworthy:
1. Greater relevance: Draw conclusions from your engagement.
What content seems to resonate the most? Which products are the most popular? Is there anything you can do to improve your communication and target your audience more accurately?
Making hypotheses and running A/B tests to prove them is an excellent way to improve the efficiency of your email marketing communication.
2. Increased commitment and loyalty:
ESending the right messages to the right people is a win-win approach. Your contacts are more likely to open your emails and follow your calls to action.
They are also more likely to stay longer on your contact list. These factors translate directly into business results.
3. Improved delivery capacity:
The engagement rate affects the deliverability of your emails. In other words, if your contacts open and click on the links in your messages, it means that they find your content attractive and valuable. In such a case, your emails will have no problem reaching their inbox.
