What is subscriber engagement? Why does it matter? How do you ensure that your recipients are engaged, and what happens if you don’t? Read on to find out.
Subscriber engagement refers to recipients caring about the email you send them. Recipients who read your emails, who open them (load images), who click on links, these are your engaged recipients.
Having a low level of subscriber engagement means your deliverability is going to suffer. ISPs notice that recipients don’t care about your mail. The smart ISPs notice which emails, which sending IP addresses, which senders, send mail that people want, and which ones send mail that people don’t want (or don’t seem to care about). These top ISPs use this as one of their “stack rank” measures to decide which mail to deliver to the inbox and which mail to deliver to the spam folder. If your mail has a very low open rate, a very low click through rate, you’re likely to be ranked low enough that it’s going to push your mail to the spam folder.
Gmail, in particular, seems to be very watchful on this front. And, if you run afoul of this problem at Gmail, you really don’t have any options for immediate recourse. They don’t typically respond to sender requests for assistance, and what their users want takes precedence over a sender’s desire for the inbox. Few other ISPs feel any differently.
The ISP won’t fix it, so what do you do? Here’s what I’ve learned: What you need to do is stop mailing to people who don’t care about your emails. You’ve got a wealth of data at your fingertips that tells you who is opening (loading images), who is clicking on emails you send via ExactTarget. Take those subscribers who have opened or clicked at least one recent email from you, and consider them your core of engaged subscribers. Try restricting your sends so that you are mailing only to those subscribers. Continue that process for a few weeks of solid sending, and you’re going to improve your sending reputation at most ISPs.
After you’ve climbed your way back to the inbox, it’s time to figure out what to do with your un-engaged recipients, all those people who have never opened or clicked on any email message you’ve sent. This is where testing and application of marketing strategy can come in handy. I’ve seen test data that suggests that in some cases, sending to unengaged subscribers less often will help to get them more interested and help to get them to open or click on your email messages. (This helps when subscribers were simply overwhelmed by the amount of email you’re sending.) I’ve also seen cases where that’s not enough to keep you out of the spam folder in the long term, and what you need to do is re opt-in (reconfirm) your unengaged subscribers. They’re not looking at your emails anyway, so don’t be afraid to send them off after one last “hurrah” – send them an offer for a discount, freebie, or spiff, and ask them to click on a link to remain on your email list. If they don’t respond, stop mailing them.
What happens after all of this is that you’ve cleaned up your mailing practices so that a greater percentage of the mail you’re sending is perceived as wanted. The net result is that you look like a better sender from an ISP’s perspective, which is just about the only perspective that matters when trying to get your mail delivered successfully.
Subscriber engagement refers to recipients caring about the email you send them. Recipients who read your emails, who open them (load images), who click on links, these are your engaged recipients.
Having a low level of subscriber engagement means your deliverability is going to suffer. ISPs notice that recipients don’t care about your mail. The smart ISPs notice which emails, which sending IP addresses, which senders, send mail that people want, and which ones send mail that people don’t want (or don’t seem to care about). These top ISPs use this as one of their “stack rank” measures to decide which mail to deliver to the inbox and which mail to deliver to the spam folder. If your mail has a very low open rate, a very low click through rate, you’re likely to be ranked low enough that it’s going to push your mail to the spam folder.
Gmail, in particular, seems to be very watchful on this front. And, if you run afoul of this problem at Gmail, you really don’t have any options for immediate recourse. They don’t typically respond to sender requests for assistance, and what their users want takes precedence over a sender’s desire for the inbox. Few other ISPs feel any differently.
The ISP won’t fix it, so what do you do? Here’s what I’ve learned: What you need to do is stop mailing to people who don’t care about your emails. You’ve got a wealth of data at your fingertips that tells you who is opening (loading images), who is clicking on emails you send via ExactTarget. Take those subscribers who have opened or clicked at least one recent email from you, and consider them your core of engaged subscribers. Try restricting your sends so that you are mailing only to those subscribers. Continue that process for a few weeks of solid sending, and you’re going to improve your sending reputation at most ISPs.
After you’ve climbed your way back to the inbox, it’s time to figure out what to do with your un-engaged recipients, all those people who have never opened or clicked on any email message you’ve sent. This is where testing and application of marketing strategy can come in handy. I’ve seen test data that suggests that in some cases, sending to unengaged subscribers less often will help to get them more interested and help to get them to open or click on your email messages. (This helps when subscribers were simply overwhelmed by the amount of email you’re sending.) I’ve also seen cases where that’s not enough to keep you out of the spam folder in the long term, and what you need to do is re opt-in (reconfirm) your unengaged subscribers. They’re not looking at your emails anyway, so don’t be afraid to send them off after one last “hurrah” – send them an offer for a discount, freebie, or spiff, and ask them to click on a link to remain on your email list. If they don’t respond, stop mailing them.
What happens after all of this is that you’ve cleaned up your mailing practices so that a greater percentage of the mail you’re sending is perceived as wanted. The net result is that you look like a better sender from an ISP’s perspective, which is just about the only perspective that matters when trying to get your mail delivered successfully.
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