How to Give Your Email Engagement a Boost Ahead of the Holiday Season

With the holiday season approaching, it pays to examine your email engagement more closely. How many people click through your content? Once they land on your website, how many hit the “Buy” button?

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from tracking information about people who open their emails, thus rendering open rates obsolete. Not knowing how many clicks your subject line gets can be confusing. However, open rates are not your only engagement metrics. Clicks and conversions tell a better story about what your audience wants. Constant Contact has superior delivery and open rates and resends to those who don’t open it the first time.

If these numbers are low, there are ways to help them increase.

Related: How to Maximize Your Email Results This Holiday Season

Email engagement Why it’s so good.

First, let’s see what good email engagement means in 2021. Benchmarks differ, but good click rates range between 2 percent and 2.60 percent across all industries. The average return on investment (ROI) varies between $38 and $57, depending on the industry and the efforts invested.

Whether your metrics hover around these stats or not, you want to maximize your email results. So, let’s explore some tried and tested ways to increase email engagement.

Related: Why Email Marketing Is Better for Your Business Than Social Media

Inactive subscribers could be more than just inactive

Dealing with inactive subscribers is something every email marketer has to do. Why is it so important to address this issue? There are two main reasons you shouldn’t ignore it:

• People who don’t engage with your emails bring down your overall engagement. Their lack of reaction tells inbox providers that your content is irrelevant, making your emails more likely to go to the junk folder.
• Some inactive subscribers may have abandoned their email addresses for good. If they don’t log back into their accounts for more than six months, those accounts may be disabled. Moreover, internet service providers and blocklist providers may recycle them and turn them into spam traps.

First, you can try to segment and re-engage these dormant subscribers with a compelling offer. Whatever your approach, remove those who have not shown any sign of life for more than six months. They’re a lost cause and a risk to your deliverability.

Related: Connecting With Customers In 2021 And Beyond Through Empathy Marketing

Invalid emails and spam complaints keep you from reaching the inbox

Inactive contacts are not the only ones affecting the quality of your email list and engagement. There’s a wide array of harmful email addresses that could be lurking in your list. Before you launch your holiday campaigns, it’s best to prune them out.

Let’s take invalid emails: The bounces they cause affect your reputation as a sender, which can make inbox providers take you for a spammer. Besides bounces, spam complaints are more than a nuisance — they’re a critical signal to inbox providers. More than one complaint for every 1,000 emails can cause your messages to land in spam.

Regular list cleaning is a must for any marketer or business owner looking to boost email engagement. Once you validate your database in bulk, it’s a good idea to use a real-time email verification service to keep your contacts in shape. If you use Constant Contact, your lists are cleaned with each campaign automatically to avoid being blocklisted.

Related: 5 Tips to Significantly Increase the ROI of Your Next Email Campaign

It’s not too late to assess the quality of your content

A lesson for other ecommerce businesses. Once you double-check your email list, it’s time to examine your content closely. Does it compel enough people to click on your landing pages? What type of content gets the most attention? Constant Contact can automatically segment your lists in several ways to achieve an even better focus on each potential or existing customer.

Isolate your highest-performing newsletters and campaigns and see what they have in common. Here are a few aspects to help you pinpoint why these emails have the best results:

• Topics: Are these emails addressing a challenge many people are confronted with?
• Subject lines: Are they shorter than the others or quite the opposite? Also, did you use preview text?
• Design: Do these emails include images, or are they plain text?
• Content length: On average, how long are your most successful emails?

Answer these questions and, with this data in hand, replicate your audience’s favorite emails. This will not only help you boost engagement during the holidays but also build a more active and loyal list in the long run.

A few bonus tips

Crossing all these things off your list will push you ahead of the pack in the coming weeks. What else can you do to get your subscribers’ attention? Here are a few extra pointers:

• Make unsubscribing fast and easy. Your email template should have an “Unsubscribe” button so people can get off your list anytime.
• Test the deliverability of your emails before you send them. Today’s technology lets you see if your email will land in the inbox or spam.
• Segment your list and target each group with the most helpful and relevant content. Follow up using automation.
• Increase the number of emails you send during the holidays. Many companies will be competing for people’s attention. Sometimes, the way to stand out is by reminding people of your offer — several times.
• Once again, Constant Contact does all of this for you automatically.

Related: The 11 Commandments of Online Marketing

Spearhead Multimedia has been a Constant Contact partner since 2008. Although Constant Contact offers in-depth tutorials and extensive coaching, we can also create and manage your lists and email campaigns. Contact us today.

WRITTEN BY Liviu Tanase

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor