5 Tips to Increase Your Email Engagement

You just sent your most recent marketing email, and now you’re watching the stats roll in – hooray! Email metrics are one of the best ways to assess campaign performance. When your emails receive high engagement, you can typically expect increased ROI. 

So, how do you boost campaign engagement and create more success from your email strategy? Here are 5 important avenues to consider.

1. Ensure your contact list is updated and segmented 

Your emails are only as good as your contact list. If your list is old or contains outdated email addresses, your open rate will suffer. Consistently review email bounce lists and update or remove out-of-date contacts. 

Take it one step further by customizing your content and creating targeted emails to contacts with similar interests or geography. Targeted, thoughtful emails help get the right messages to the right people. We often see this translate into much higher engagement rates and overall ROI. 

2. Write subject lines and headings as news headlines 

The best marketing emails capture your attention in the first few words of a subject line. Mimic news headlines, which are designed to be attention grabbing, when you’re creating your subject line. Apply the same concept to the various sections throughout your email (especially for larger newsletters) to keep your audience reading and clicking until the end. 

3. Send your campaign mid-week at 10am

According to HubSpot, the highest open and click-through rates take place on weekdays around 10am for B-to-B emails. We find that emails sent around 1pm produce similar results. Most people are starting their workday or getting back from lunch around these times, so they’re more likely to open and engage with an email. 

4. Include photos with people’s faces – and make sure they’re linked 

Photos make emails more memorable and enhance their performance. The most engaging photos are those of people, especially when you can clearly see their faces. On Instagram, photos with faces get 38% more likes, and Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without. Hyperlink the photos in your emails to relevant website pages or other sources to drive traffic to strategic destinations. This will also help increase your click-through rate.

5. Always offer value to your audience  

When creating your next email, ask the question: what’s in it for the recipient? If you aren’t able to leave them with a takeaway or piece of advice they can use, you may start to see a dip in engagement. The best value-add pieces showcase your team as experts in your field and drive traffic to your website. Consider including blogs by team members on relevant topics, timely industry news coverage, or other exclusive insights that only your email recipients receive by being part of your network. 

Bri Carlesimo is a Senior Account Manager at Pierce Public Relations.