Email Marketing: Tips for Higher Engagement

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools in a marketer’s tool belt, but that does not mean it is easy to get right. Like many marketing methods, engagement is a key element, and to get the most out of emails, there are certain things that need to be done, including welcome emails, proper calls to action, and personalization.

What Defines Email Marketing Engagement?

Engagement can mean different things depending on the situation. For social media, it involves things such as likes, comments, and clicks. When it comes to email marketing, the simple act of opening the email begins the engagement chain, which is, hopefully, followed by a click or conversion.

Additionally, subscribing and unsubscribing are important engagement metrics, although you always want the number of unsubscribes to be as low as possible. It will happen, probably quite often, but limiting it comes with providing quality content people want to see.

Tips for Higher Email Marketing Engagement

Keep in mind that email marketing is effective, but it also takes a lot of effort. You have to manage email lists, personalize content, and constantly look at up-to-date data so that you can adjust where needed. Below are some useful tips to help make your email marketing efforts as effective as possible and drive engagement.

Welcome Emails Are a Must

Welcome emails are a best practice that you should utilize, regardless of effectiveness. Why? Because they confirm someone has joined the campaign and make a great first impression on a new subscriber. Moreover, they do happen to be highly effective, with research revealing that they:

• Are likely to get four times more opens and five times more clicks than regular marketing emails.
• Around 50% of people open welcome emails, but over 75% expect to receive a welcome email.
• Welcome emails increase user engagement and their willingness to interact with a brand.

Welcome emails should be simple and visually appealing, getting right to the point and providing users with whatever they were promised. Ideally, they will be personalized to each individual user.

“Welcome emails can help you build a relationship with your customers, solidify your branding, and give you the opportunity to build sales. They can also help you increase your LTV, lifetime order value of your customers, if done right,” says the CEO at Mawer CapitalRudy Mawer.

Experiment with everything

Every aspect of email marketing should be optimized, but that requires intense experimentation to get things right. Start with the subject line, which is responsible for nearly half of the openings. Some things that can help get users to open a marketing email include:

• Evoking their curiosity
• Adding a bit of humor
• Making them fear missing out on something

Basically, catching a user’s interest is important, and it extends to the pre-header text, which is also shown in the inbox and offers users additional reasons to open the email. It should be short and sweet.

A/B testing is another way of experimentation that is helpful when you are trying to increase email marketing engagement. It allows you to send out two different versions of the email, changing things like images, layout, and headers to see which one performs better.

Use Effective CTAs

Making people click is everything. It is the engagement you really want in most email marketing campaigns. Therefore, finding ways to get people to click on a button or link is a priority, and that means you need effective calls to action. It also means getting creative to stay fresh.

“If you want your customers to take action you need to make your call to action, CTA, as clear and concise as possible. The fewer steps to take and the less convincing you have to do to get your customer to click, the better your conversions,” says Mawer.

Once again, experimentation is key, from the word choice to the design and placement. After all, the call to action and the way it is presented are both important, and effectiveness might change depending on the audience.

Keep Things Light

There is no reason for email marketing to be overly serious. If anything, there is more to gain from being fun and light, engaging the audience with easy-to-read and entertaining copy. Pay more attention to keeping things on-brand and positive. You can even add in some humor.

Ensure Mobile Responsiveness

These days, everything has to be mobile responsive, and that goes double for emails since a majority of people open emails on their phones. Fortunately, it is the default for most platforms and websites, but that does not mean it is guaranteed. When you are creating an email marketing campaign, check to make sure it looks just as good on mobile devices as it does on a desktop or tablet.

Add a Personal Touch

Personalization is a major factor when it comes to marketing and engagement. It starts with the subject line, where a personalized sentence can improve open rates by 26%. Adding a personal touch also makes people more likely to share the experience with others, increasing the effectiveness and ROI even further.

The only problem with personalization is that it requires additional data, such as names, birthdays, and whatever other information you need to make it happen. For those trying to revamp an existing system, it can be hard to get new information from existing subscribers.

“Personalization is so important for marketing in general. You can customize your emails by mentioning your customer’s name, using analytics to understand their buying habits, and tailor your messaging so it’s relevant to each individual customer,” Mawer added.