9 Tips for Ensuring Maximum Email Engagement

Jan 19, 2022
7
If you work in marketing or run a business, then you probably know that you need to build an email list. Email marketing provides the highest ROI for the majority of businesses at $40 for each $1 spent on average.
Most business owners and marketers probably come across a lot of content on a regular basis that shows different ways to build an email list, but how much do you know when it comes to effectively interacting and engaging with your mailing list?

Maybe you are wondering what to send your subscribers to get the best engagement, how to keep your open rates high, what to do if subscribers are inactive, and how to make your emails exciting and interesting. Maybe you have already started sending email newsletters to your subscribers, but if you are not writing actionable emails, the messages might be doing more harm than good. While subscribers join your list because they want to hear from you, they don’t want to get any messages that are spammy or waste their time. So, what can you do to increase email engagement?

Customer Engagement Email Examples to Consider

If you want to get better results from your email marketing strategies, engaging with your subscribers is a must. Some examples of how you can increase engagement with your subscriber list include:

  1. Having a clear goal in mind
  2. Writing engaging subject lines
  3. Personalizing messages
  4. Calls to action
  5. Storytelling
  6. Exclusive offers
  7. Adding convenience and value
  8. Short value emails
  9. Demonstrating respect

Read on to find out more about how to put these into action in your next campaign.

A Clear Goal for Email Engagement

The first step to increasing subscriber engagement with your marketing emails is to have a clear goal in mind. Why are you sending a newsletter or email? If you don’t have a clear answer to this question, you’re not ready to send it. Promotional campaigns or coupons are often self-explanatory, but other marketing emails, such as newsletters, tend to have more of an underlying message in the content. It is best to have one goal for each newsletter since including too much information in your message is only going to confuse your reader. Some common goals include driving traffic to a landing page, encouraging subscribers to share content with others, selling a product or service, getting downloads, or promoting an event.

Boost Engagement With Email Marketing Subject Lines

It’s important to make sure that you don’t overlook subject lines when it comes to writing engaging content for your marketing email. Many marketers and business owners make the mistake of coming up with a subject line in just a couple of seconds after investing lots of time into writing awesome email body content. But the fact is that if your subject line doesn’t engage the reader right from the start, they’re probably never going to open the email and engage with your content at all.

Engage Email Marketing Subscribers With Personalization

Personalizing your email marketing messages encourages engagement by helping you to build a stronger relationship with your subscribers. Addressing the recipient by their first name is a simple and effective way to personalize your email marketing messages, but there are several things that you can do to take it even further. For example, bear in mind that subscribers are more likely to engage with messages that are highly relevant to them. Addressing them by their first name is not going to increase engagement if the message is advertising a product that they are not interested in. This is why it is so important to segment your email lists to send more targeted messages and ensure that subscribers receive content they are interested in.

How to Increase Email Engagement With Calls to Action

You should include a call to action (CTA) that aligns with the main goal that you have for your marketing email. Calls to action should be easy to see and engage with, which will in turn increase the number of subscribers who actually click through and take action. It’s a good idea to include the CTA several times within the email; placing it at the start of the message and then once again to conclude can increase engagement rates.

Tell a Story to Engage Email Marketing Subscribers

Mastering the art of storytelling and applying it to your emails and newsletters can be an ideal way to increase both engagement and sales. Stories are often one of the best marketing strategies to use since they can be a source of entertainment. Nobody will engage with a boring email, so talking about something that your readers are likely to find interesting and exciting is one of the best ways to get those engagement rates up. Get creative when it comes to storytelling; you can tell a story of your own or one that you have heard from somebody else, but the main aim is to ensure that the content is relevant to your subscribers’ needs and interests. An engaging story, rather than simply listing facts, will captivate your audience and encourage the desired response.

How to Improve Email Engagement With Exclusive Offers

As a business owner or marketer with an email list, one of the best ways to increase engagement is to do something that your subscribers are going to appreciate, such as sending exclusive offers. This can have some great results including encouraging more subscriber and customer loyalty, encourage them to do something in return for you such as sharing your brand on social media or referring you to a friend, and make subscribers think more highly of you. Exclusive offers are one of the best things that you can give as a business to increase engagement and build the relationship with your subscribers. For example, you could offer a live event that only subscribers are invited to or provide free or early bird access to a product or service for subscribers only. A simple yet effective option that is used by many online stores is exclusive money-off discounts on purchases that only subscribers can access.

Engagement Mail: Make it Convenient

Your email list is one of the most valuable assets that your business owns, so it’s important to put effort into taking care of your subscribers, making the experience convenient for them, and offering them value. There are various ways that you can provide value to your subscribers. Bear in mind that if somebody is on your list, it’s usually because they like your brand or content. However, just because they have agreed to hear from you, does not mean that all your subscribers want it in the same way. You might email all your subscribers to let them know about new content you have created, for example. Consider making it more convenient to them by providing them with alternative options for consuming this content. Re-creating original content in different forms is not difficult but can add a huge amount of extra value to your subscribers.

Email Engagement Strategy: Short Value Emails

Consider what your subscribers’ email inboxes might look like. Every day, they are probably getting lots of emails from businesses that they like asking them to read their content, sign up for their services or buy their products. Even if these types of emails are valuable to your subscribers, getting so many can quickly lead to them becoming tired of them. To increase engagement and maximize subscriber satisfaction, consider sending emails that only focus on teaching your subscribers something interesting and providing them value, without any links to your content, calls to action, product suggestions, or asking for replies.

Demonstrate Respect for Subscribers With Engagement Based Email Marketing

Today, most of us receive hundreds of email marketing messages in our inboxes. For email marketers, this means focusing on a main goal of forming deeper relationships with their subscribers. But this is not always easy to do – it’s not easy to break down barriers using email only. Likely, you have never met your subscribers, and they probably see you as just another business sending them messages.

Even if they like your brand, most subscribers are probably going to be skeptical about the idea that you actually care about them as people and assume that you just want their money.

The good news is that there are several things that you can do with engagement-based email marketing to demonstrate that you respect your subscribers as human beings, rather than seeing them as just another lead to convert to a customer.

For example, you can send out surveys to get feedback, opinions, and suggestions from your subscribers to demonstrate to them that what they think really does matter to you and your business. Even better, send a follow-up email to thank them for their feedback and to show how you have implemented it. Another strategy to consider is to find employees through your mailing list. If you are currently hiring, letting your mailing list know about the new position shows them that you see them as people with valuable skills that you respect, and think might add value to your company. Don’t forget to include the necessary qualifications (e.g., certification of agile project management).

Email marketing is one of the top ways to drive more traffic to your website and convert leads to customers, but in order to get the best results, it’s important to focus on engaging with your mailing list.

Line and dots