You probably don’t need me to tell you just how impactful email marketing can be. But it’s still worth looking at the numbers because they make for pretty impressive reading.
According to a survey from Litmus, the average email marketing program delivers a return on investment (ROI) of $37 for every single dollar spent. Even more impressively, that jumps to 42:1 for brands that describe their email marketing strategies as “successful”.
That might not sound like a big difference, but if you invest $10,000 in your email marketing, that equates to a $50,000 sales gap between an average and successful program.
In other words, it’s in your best interests to ring every ounce of performance from your email marketing campaigns –– and that means driving email engagement.
No wonder, then, that three in five marketers say their number one priority is to increase engagement rates. However, that’s clearly no easy task, with over two-fifths of respondents also naming it as their biggest digital marketing challenge.
But while it’s undoubtedly hard to boost email engagement, it’s by no means impossible. Read on for some essential definitions, followed by seven tried-and-trusted strategies to help you get it right.
What Do We Mean By “Email Engagement?”
The term “email engagement” is pretty nebulous –– it can refer to a lot of different things.
One marketer might use it to broadly refer to the number of people who open their email newsletters, whereas another might be talking about hard-and-fast metrics.
So before we dive into methods for improving email engagement, it makes sense to clarify exactly what we’re talking about. When we say “email engagement”, we’re referring to improving three key email marketing metrics:
- Email open rate: The percentage of people on your marketing list who open a specific email.
- Click-through rate: The percentage of people who clicked at least one link in a given email.
- Conversion rate: The percentage of email subscribers who complete a desired action –– like downloading an ebook or buying a product –– after clicking through from an email.
As you can likely see, if you’re able to improve each of those metrics, you’ll be well placed to generate higher returns from your email marketing expenditure.
How to Improve Your Email Engagement Metrics
Now that we’re clear on exactly what we mean by “email kuwait email list engagement”, let’s dive into seven proven email marketing tactics to boost your open, click-through, and conversion rates:
1. Segment Your Email Lists
If you know anything about email marketing –– which, if the importance of sem positioning to boost your brand and your sales you’re reading this article, you presumably do –– then you’ll already know about the benefits of personalization. Unsurprisingly, we’re going to talk about it a lot in this article, because it’s a surefire way belize lists to drive email engagement.
But before we reach that point, we need to get one thing straight: personalization without segmentation just doesn’t work (for most brands).
If you have an extremely high-value product that requires ongoing payments –– such as a SaaS product –– you can potentially afford to work with a tiny email list and personalize your emails on a one-on-one level. But for most businesses, that sort of labor-intensive approach just isn’t practical or cost effective.
Which is precisely why you need email segmentation.
Think about it: if you’re not segmenting your audience, you’re effectively working with a single email list. And unless every single person on that list is approximately the same age, has the same hobbies and interests, pain points, and goals, and lives in the same place, it’s highly doubtful you’ll be able to do personalization effectively. At best, you’ll be able to do some basic personalization; at worst, your emails will be totally generic.
All of which means that segmented email campaigns massively outperform non-segmented ones. According to one study, compared to non-segmented campaigns, segmented email campaigns achieve:
- 11% more unique opens
- 14% higher open rates
- 101% more clicks
So segmentation should absolutely be the first step in improving your email engagement.
Cut and slice your email list in as many ways as you see fit; don’t limit yourself to basic, top-level segments like age, gender, and location. Target different sizes of company and different use cases.
The more you segment, and the more laser-focused those segments, the more highly personalized your emails will be –– and the more you’ll sell.
2. Personalize Your Imagery
The days of sending generic newsletters to thousands of people are way behind us, because it simply doesn’t yield results anymore.
Today, personalization and understanding your demographics are everything. Nine in 10 leading marketers agree that it significantly contributes to business profitability, while three-fifths of consumers expect brands to offer tailored experiences based on their preferences.
Unfortunately, a lot of marketers see the word “personalization”, add a {first.name} field to their email subject line, and call it a day.
That sort of superficial, unengaged personalization just doesn’t cut the mustard today. Modern consumers are smart; they want real relevant content personalization that makes it feel like an email was truly crafted for them and no one else. Content and offers that speak to their specific needs and challenges.
Personalizing your copy to reference specific pain points and relevant products is a good starting point. But it’s only that: a starting point.
To truly dazzle your audience and drive email engagement, you need to start personalizing your imagery too. Indeed, one study found that personalized imagery can lead to a 14x increase in email click-through rates.
Sounds like a lot of work? If you do it all manually, it definitely is.
Fortunately, tools like Hyperise make image personalization quick and simple.