A subscriber may open your emails and give them a quick scan. But that doesn’t mean they’ll read them, enjoy them, or share them. The former is your average subscriber, while the latter is every marketer’s fantasy: an engaged subscriber.
When you’re engaged, you’re lucky enough to have found someone who’s so interesting, you can’t help but keep interacting with them. At least for a while, until you get bored and dump them. It’s the same thing with emails.
Good engagement rates are the intersection of good open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Open rates are the percentage of subscribers who have opened your email. Standing between 12% to 25%, good open rates are the very first step toward potential conversions. But again, open rates alone don’t measure success.
As for your click-through rates, aiming for 1% to 5% should be your goal. They measure the percentage of subscribers who clicked one or more links in your email. Does that mean they’ve bought something or subscribed to something after clicking that link? Nope, it doesn’t.
That leads us into the mouthwatering conversion rates. The sexiest metric of all, conversion rates display the percentage of those subscribers who open an email, read an email, click on a link inside that email, and complete the action you want them to take. Whether that’s registering for a webinar or purchasing whatever you’re selling, congrats. They did it. If you can keep them between 2% and 5%, you’re doing great.
Lucky for you, there’s a lot you can do to give your email engagement a much-needed boost. Let’s have a look at some areas you might want to work on.
Start With the Not-So-Obvious: Subject Lines
Duh. It’s worn-out at this point, but there’s a reason subject lines should never go unmentioned. I say they’re “not-so-obvious” because, if writing great subject lines was no longer a mystery, people wouldn’t be rushing through them and expecting a miracle.
As Aristotle once said, “People can’t engage with an email they didn’t open in the first place.”
I understand your frustration, though. If people constantly ignore your emails, why even bother trying at this point? You’ll just keep injecting urgency and scarcity in your lines like there’s no tomorrow, hoping one day they’ll work.
Stop it. Immediately.
People will abuse the right marketing tactics and then wonder why they don’t work. Brands will be like, “open quick”, only for you to open it out of sheer curiosity and come across the most boring email you’ve ever seen. By the way, sheer curiosity doesn’t generate quality clicks.
Here’s an example of an email I just had to open.
As you can tell from the headphone emoji, this is from a new podcast episode. The podcast in question is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Although the above email had nothing to do with summoning spirits through an Ouija board, it was about leveraging one’s past life experiences (past titles, past jobs, past relationships) to write better copy. The interviewee was Amy Collins, who claims to have lived “at least 500 past lives” before dipping her feet into the copywriting business.
There’s a huge difference between being clickbait-y and being creative, as you can see from the example above. This is a unique and creative twist on a subject line that could’ve been as bland as “NEW PODCAST EPISODE”. There’s a “NEW!” at the end, but it comes after an exciting “how-to”.
I’d be remiss not to mention pre-header texts. If the subject line is SpongeBob, the pre-header text is Patrick. They can’t live without each other.
This is a pre-header text, by the way. It should expand on what the subject line says, giving you another chance to entice your readers even more.
Those are pretty cool examples. Let’s get on to another one that shows how important pre-header texts can be.
One email subject line from Beardbrand reads like this:
“Talk is cheap”
Okay. Cool headline. Yet, if that was everything there was to read, I don’t think a lot of us would be very eager to click on it. I’m not sure how this specific email would perform, regardless if there was gold inside of it. That’s because people wouldn’t exactly know what to expect.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The pre-header text for this same email reads:
“It only takes 1 word to know if a Beard Oil is great.”
And suddenly, beard product aficionados have an itch on their fingers.
I’m not interested in beard oil. I don’t even have a beard. But I had to know what that 1 word was. Those who are interested in beard products, though, are a lot more likely to end up with a full cart thanks to that one email. They’ve taken the first step: to open it.
Learn the Art of Curiosity-Driven, Well-Crafted, and Vivid Emails
Not sure how many books you’ve read this year, but reading can help you a ton in this department. Think about a story that has left you like this:
(Reading GIF link: https://giphy.com/gifs/books-reading-my-brilliance-il1yesdofGlZ6)
At one moment, you’re leisurely running your eyes through a paragraph. Next, you’re on the edge of your seat, visualizing a thought-provoking scenario. It almost feels real. It’s so detailed, and the fact that it almost leaves you hanging is a great curiosity driver. You have no choice but to keep reading.
You can use the same tactic for your emails. Except, of course, you won’t write in huge blocks. You’ll harness the power of storytelling and apply it to the readable formatting of emails.
Here’s how the following email from Joanna Wiebe begins…
You can almost feel the happiness of earning a brand new qualified lead. You can almost see the $$$ hitting your bank account.
The white space makes it even better. Reading single line after single line is easy on the eyes. This just keeps you reading until you find out what happens next.
What happens next? You’ll have to read to find out. And if you remain interested ‘til the end, you just might feel like clicking a link or a button. Because you just need to find out what happens next.
Help Subscribers Find More About Themselves
Are you the dumb friend in your group? Which fruit matches your personality? What Machine Gun Kelly song are you?
I have no idea. But if there’s a way I can find out, sign me the f*** up.
If something has to do with themselves, people will be interested in it. Period. We’ll talk a little more about this in a minute. It could be the stupidest thing in the world, like letting BuzzFeed guess their real age. This was a real quiz that was taken over 5 million times.
Quizzes are fun and interactive. They give you something to do. But most of all, they’re engaging. When they’re serious, you’ll walk away with some extra knowledge about yourself.
Dumb yet funny quizzes aside, have a look at this one:
The above is a newsletter template from MailerLite, which perfectly illustrates this topic. You may say you’re a true coffee lover. But are you, though? This quiz will try you. Bring it on.
Plus, just under there, you can read that whoever participates will get 10% off on their next coffee order. Great incentive!
Give Them More of What They Like
Humans are naturally selfish. It doesn’t matter how selfless they claim to be, their ears perk up and their eyes light up when it’s all about themselves.
This is what email segmentation and subsequent personalization capitalize on: subscribers’ personal activities and preferences. A study by MailChimp analyzed 11,000 segmented campaigns and concluded that those campaigns had 100,95% more clicks and 9,73% fewer unsubscribes.
What’s more, segmenting and personalizing your emails will help you:
- Create emails that stand out on your subscribers’ inboxes.
- Deliver time-appropriate and convenient emails.
- Offer content people care about. Because it’s all about them, them, them.
Letterboxd Rushes is a great example. Letterboxd users receive a weekly email notifying them of their activity on the app, based on who they follow and on what they’ve watched.
Not only that, but users get to see how many films they’ve watched in the year.
Not nearly enough, is it?
How does Letterboxd do it? In fact, how do brands personalize their emails like that?
You can do this with email segmentation. There are several different strategies you can use to segment your emails, ranging from their demographics to their personal interests. The best email marketing services out there will help you do that, as well as with the task automation it requires.
Note that just because you’ve personalized your emails, that doesn’t mean they’ll be opened every time. But your click-through rates will surely increase.
Let Them Share It Or Forward It
Who would ever forward an email? Most of us are under the age of 60, thank you very much.
The thing is, I’m not talking about work emails we’re required to forward. This is about emails we can’t help but forward because:
- They include offers your friends and family can’t miss.
- They have something unusual and interesting, such as a quiz or an interactive tool.
- They feature informative content that someone you know would enjoy.
Interestingly, Litmus came up with a recent study displaying popular topics that encourage email forwards. You can see them below:
Those emails in the 99th percentile have been the most forwarded. More than 99% of other emails, to be exact. Those were:
- Events (requiring registration or RSVP).
- News and helpful content (emphasis on this one!).
- Transactional emails.
Does that mean only those types of emails will be forwarded? Not at all. They’re just more likely to be shared.
Sometimes, if you want subscribers to forward your emails…all you’ve gotta do is ask.
And no, that doesn’t only include referral emails. You can ask them to forward any email you send.
If you have a reason to believe your subscribers won’t forward your email without some friendly nudges, you can also offer incentives, like Matt Bockenstette did here:
If you forward this email to a friend or three, you’ll get a bonus bundle. All you’ve got to do is share it. It’s that simple.
Use GIFs!!!
Yes. As it turns out, those things we were all over back in 2012 are still helpful to this day.
Truth be told, we all fell in love with GIFs from the moment we first saw one. It takes us back to the time of our lives when our biggest problem was whether it was spelled “gif” or “jif”.
(It’s jif, by the way.)
Dell, the computer company, saw a 109% lift in revenue thanks to GIFs in an email. MarketingSherpa couldn’t have written it better:
“While these video-photo hybrids are a fun visual treat for consumers, marketers are using GIFs as a valuable way to showcase products that a static photo just can’t do justice.”
Funny enough, Dell was also promoting their convertible laptop-tablet hybrid. Here’s the celebrity GIF demonstrating how the computer works:
The best thing is, you can have fun with GIFs in your emails. Joanna Wiebe does it all the time. Look:
The email had nothing to do with Friends, but it sure was a great opener. I bet Friends stans read every word.
Three is Better Than One…
…And one thing leads to another. Your email engagement rates depend on the three of them: opens, clicks, and conversions.
As you already know, sheer curiosity can only hold a relationship for a certain amount of time. Engagement is about earning your subscribers’ trust and, above all, keeping things interesting.
If you can make things more exciting for your subscribers at every touchpoint in your email marketing campaigns, do it. Engagement is what keeps them enthusiastic about reading your emails and finding out more about your brand.
Lose that spark, and you’ll part ways soon.