Email Engagement Strategy
One of the main advantages of email marketing is trackability and one of the benefits of this trackability is measuring how engaged your audience is. Can you see a response to your messages or are they simply opening your emails and moving on? Here are some questions to think about as you think about your email engagement strategy:
How am I defining engagement? The goals of your email program need to be clearly stated and aligned with your overall business goals, and you need to understand the difference between an engaged subscriber and a disengaged subscriber. This may sound simple and obvious, but I’ve worked with sophisticated clients who don’t know how to answer these questions.
How am I measuring engagement? In addition to a combination of the metrics mentioned above, there are others to consider: social metrics (likes/shares, fans/followers), user-generated feedback metrics (product reviews, ratings, and testimonials), and feedback gathered from surveys. Ideally, in addition to sending customer satisfaction surveys that focus on Net Promoter Scores, you’re also sending a survey that’s focused on the email subscriber experience. This type of survey can generate valuable information that you can layer on top of other email program metrics.
How do my engagement metrics compare to my competition? Engagement needs to be considered in the context of all the other messages competing for your subscribers’ time and attention in the inbox, as well as the activity of those subscribers who “overlap” with your direct competitors. In other words, of the subscribers who you share with your top three to five competitors, how do your engagement metrics measure up?
What is my strategy for improving engagement? Not surprisingly, affecting change starts with mapping out a strategy for what needs improving and then having a clear plan of action for how you’re going to get there, along with measureable goals to track progress.
(via Clickz)