Top 3 Ways to Increase Email Engagement

Flight discounts, shoe coupons, magazine subscriptions – opening your email inbox can be quite the crapshoot of offers! But amidst the sea of junk mail, there are often diamonds in the rough of your inbox; content that sparks your curiosity and compels you to click beyond the subject line.

That’s why email marketing is one of the most successful digital marketing strategies. When it’s executed strategically, email marketing gets customers to act and engage with your brand.

The secret to a well-executed email marketing plan? Knowing what motivates a reader to click and optimizing the content of every email you send to get your target audience to open them.

Factors in Email Engagement

There are plenty of factors that play into improving email engagement numbers, from timing to relevance:

Timing | The day of the week – and the hour of the day you choose to email your subscribers – can have a profound effect on email engagement rates. Personalization | Wouldn’t you be more motivated to open an email that was specifically addressed to you? Personalization makes all the difference sometimes! Optimization | Did you know that 20% of email marketing campaigns aren’t even optimized for mobile devices? If you aren’t thinking about smartphones when you create your email, it’s not going to look right for a lot of readers. Relevance | Subject lines that have nothing to do with your business or your customers’ interests are only headed straight toward the trash!

Ways to Increase Email Engagement

Email marketing is what helps businesses stay in better communication with past customers and possible prospects alike. It keeps them up to date with your brand and allows your company to spring to mind, even when they’re not even visiting your website.

But successful email engagement is still a sacred art that most small businesses are still trying to figure out. If you’re looking for some tips to boost those participation numbers, here are three ways you can help increase your email engagement and generate more leads in the process!

1. Nail Your Subject Line and Description

The first step toward increasing your email engagement is perfecting the art that is the email subject line. Subject lines essentially work as the first impression of your email, and research has shown that 47% of email recipients open an email based on what they see in the subject line alone.

To truly nail your subject lines, you need to define and understand your target audience. Who are you specifically sending this email out to?

Are they long-time customers or first-time prospects? Have they made a recent purchase, or has it been a while since you’ve heard from them? Defining the audience and your goals of any given email will unlock the keys to creating an engaging email.

Once you know the “who” and “why” of your email, it’s time to get creative with your subject line.

Personalize It | As mentioned above, incorporating personalization into your emails gives the reader more of a connection to the email right off the bat. This doesn’t even have to pertain solely to including their name; incorporate anything else you know about the recipient, such as geographical references, birthday wishes, etc.

Spark the Reader’s Curiosity | Sparking a recipient’s curiosity is a surefire way to make them open and engage with your email. Starting subject lines off with questions such as, ‘Do you really want to miss out on all these savings?’ or statements like, ‘You won’t believe what’s included in this email…’ are easy ways to peak interest.

Create a Sense of Urgency | Subject lines that reinforce a sense of urgency or promptness will motivate the reader to click and see what exactly they’re missing out on.

Inject Some Humor | If your target audience seems of the humorous variety, then injecting a little fun into your email subject lines will never do any harm.

Be Direct | Sometimes beating around the bush will only dissuade your target audience. More often than not, recipients will admire you being upfront about your email within the subject line, whether it’s regarding an exclusive offer or a new announcement.

2. Dazzle With Design

If your subject line entices the recipient enough to open your email, but they open it to only see a bland, boring, uninspiring layout that leaves much to the imagination, then it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to offer or promote; odds are they’ve deleted it immediately.

A dazzling, well-optimized, and carefully narrated email design is the second step to securing successful email engagement.

Here’s a quick checklist you can implement into every email design!

Balance Texts and Graphics | You need to create a healthy balance between text and graphics, essentially a 50-50 split of the two, so your content is easy on the eyes and never over-stimulating or overwhelming.

Be Consistent With Branding | The colors you choose, the font you pick, the logos, the tone; all of these design elements need to be on par with your company’s brand. Don’t use colors that aren’t incorporated into your brand or logos, and try to prioritize original imagery over stock photography.

Prioritize Content | Breaking up your content into waves of importance creates a natural narrative to your email that can ultimately motivate the reader to take action. Titles and headings will initiate your intention, while broken-up paragraphs that aren’t too wordy will continue to inform the recipient of what’s going on, while your conclusion will educate them on what they need to do.

Be Creative Yet Sophisticated | Cute graphics, captivating colors, enticing imagery; all of these components of email design are great for engagement, but only if you’re using them sparingly and strategically.

3. Optimize and Test

You’ve crafted the subject line, and you’re nailing the design – now you just need to bring it all home! Optimizing your email means designing your email in specific ways that increase the probability of recipient engagement.

Some great examples of email optimization include calls to action, strategic internal and external linking, and mobile friendly design.

Place Calls to Action Strategically | CTA buttons are the icons readers know to click on when they want to take action as to whatever your email is compelling them to act upon. Carefully sprinkling them throughout your email content at appropriate occasions makes it easier for them to engage with your email.

Incorporate Internal and External Links | Inserting links within the content of your email that direct them straight to your company’s services or products is an easy way to increase web traffic and encourage engagement.

Make Sure You Have a Responsive Design | You need to make sure your email is appropriately designed to be viewed and accessed across a variety of digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, etc.

Once you’ve completely optimized your email, the final step to increasing your engagement levels is through email testing. Some of the most popular ways to test engagement levels for your emails include A/B testing, review metrics, and retargeting ads.

Try A/B Testing | This is where you can experiment with different elements of your email campaign to see which design or content choices are the most effective. You start by creating two versions of an email, sending Version A to one half of recipients and sending Version B to the other half, then reviewing the engagement data to see which email was most effective.

Review the Metrics | Open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates – these are all insightful metrics you can monitor and adjust accordingly to throughout your email marketing campaigns.

Try a Retargeting Campaign | You can manage targeted email campaigns that can promote popular products or services to repeat customers, or you can explore retargeting email campaigns that promote brand-based incentives for previous customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while.

Increase Your Email Engagement With Triton Commerce

There are so many aspects to successful email marketing campaigns that it can seem overwhelming to try and figure them all out. That’s where Triton Commerce can help, offering extensive email marketing services that will ensure you’re getting as much engagement as possible out of every email campaign you embark upon.

Contact us today to learn what successful digital marketing strategies can do for your business!