Email Newsletter Engagement Metrics Analysis

🚀 Reflecting on a Year of Consistent Publishing My Newsletter: Fresh Salmon In 2023, I successfully published weekly without fail, the core focus was consistency, and building that muscle. Here's a snapshot of the year: 📈 60 Editions Published 👀 43.16% Open Rate 🔗 2.78% Click Rate Since August 2023, I've been diligently tracking several metrics for my bi-weekly newsletter, aiming to understand and enhance audience engagement: 1. Super Fans: Those who opened 100% of emails and engaged with multiple links. This group helps me gauge genuine interest and sift through misleading metrics like accidental opens. 2. Engaged Readers: Individuals opening more than 10 emails and staying active monthly. Their behavior is a key indicator of my content's stickiness and relevance. A decline here signals a need to reevaluate and innovate. 3. Potential Super Fans: Readers with an open rate of over 80% and regular engagement. They're on the path to becoming Super Fans, showing consistent interest in my content. 4. Overall Engagement: Tracking the general open and click rates gives me a broad view of my content's performance. 5. List Hygiene: Identifying and removing subscribers with over 10 sends but zero opens. This is crucial for maintaining a healthy and engaged mailing list. 6. Growth Metrics: Monitoring the month-over-month growth rate helps me understand the scalability and long-term viability of my content strategy. This journey has been enlightening, and I'm curious: What metrics are you tracking in your content journey? 🌟 #ContentCreation #NewsletterInsights #EngagementMetrics #GrowthJourney #Freshsalmonnewsletter #viveknanda #b2bcreator #b2bcreatorstylemarketing #audiencebuilding

The "OPEN" starts to become even less relevant in 2024. The shift towards CLICKS will be more the focus than ever. If your email CTR is below 2.5% or your SMS CTR is under 19%, here are 5 areas to focus on today: 1. Know Your Audience: Not all audiences are the same, so stop treating it that way. Customer and prospects aren't the same. Leverage the data in your fingertips to segment based on their lifecycle and behavior, not just “engagement” like on-site or clicks. Tip: Stop the "90 day engaged" batch and blast. 2. CTA Focus: Every email needs a clearly visible, clearly readable CTA that’s repeated often. To get a user to “click,” you have to ask clearly and frequently while staying focused on topic. Tip: One CTA, One Focus. 3. Copywriting: Your messages need to resonate with your audience. If they’re not, consider the angle, the story or the product offering. And change it. Tip: Yes words matter. Put some dollars towards it. 4. Real-Time Data: Using multiple platforms for email and SMS might mean you’re missing real-time data for real-time experiences along with contextual data on what they may be interested in and the ability to strike when the "iron is hot." Tip: Don't over-read the data and remember the human element of email marketing. 5. Email Deliverability: With the evolution of bots and changes like iOS15/MPP, open rates are deceptive. It's almost a better sign of data hygiene, then it is an actual engagement metric. The focus on Clicks will uncover that Low CTR often signals a message or an audience is too broad, unfocused, or unengaged. Tip: Stop wasting your time on people who aren't engaging and interested, focus on retaining those who are and help lead them to a first or repeat purchase. Remember: Low CTR tells you how relatable the content was to your audience based on those who opened. Aim to deliver messages that your customers can’t help but CLICK. Here's the golden targets to aim for: Aim for a minimum of 2.5% Click Rates, with a goal of 5%+ for your email. And for sms: Aim for 19%, with a goal of 25%. Start with your audience. How are you adapting your email and sms marketing in 2024 with all the changes?

A simple test you can run to show WHY it's okay to email unengaged segments less. I've been working through a deliverability and inbox placement project with a newsletter. This newsletter has just over 250k subscribers. We started with a sub-40% inbox placement rate. And we've worked our way up to a 91.5% inbox rate. One of the tactics we recently implemented to further refine our data is sending the newsletter by recency of engagement. Segments: > 0-30 Days > 31-60 Days > 61-90 Days > 91-180 Days > 181+ Days Wanna see some data? 0-30 Days >> 37.33% Open Rate >> 0.31% Click Rate 31-60 Days >> 7.18% Open Rate >> 0.19% Click Rate 61-90 Days >> 4.59% Open Rate >> 0.08% Click Rate 91-180 Days >> 2.23% Open Rate >> 0.04% Click Rate 181+ Days >> 4.70% Open Rate >> 0.11% Click Rate Interesting, interesting... ----- A few thoughts: 1) For the most part - MOST of any email engagement is coming from subscribers who have engaged in the last 60 days. This means if you have unengagement triggers set up beginning at 90 days... you're already 30 days too late. And I would argue you should trigger it at 45 days when the subscriber is showing signs of becoming unengaged/unresponsive. 2) Sending emails 1x or even 2x isn't enough. Email needs to have a full content strategy put in place with a variety of topics and content. 3) Blasting the whole list has never been a great strategy... ...but realizing that if you send to subs who haven't engaged with you in over 90+ days, you're largely being ignored... Treat those subscribers differently. They need a bit more TLC. 4) We need to move from an email channel strategy to a holistic communication channel strategy. This means email is an integrated part of a communication strategy that includes social DMs. And vice versa, social DMs are an integrated part of the email strategy. 5) Your sender name has never been more important. Your sender name has actual value assigned to it by subscribers and a goal should be to win the open based on your sender name alone. ----- Again, easy test to run - showing data to stakeholders why "just blasting everybody" is a poor strategy. Have you ever run a test like this before? #email #emailmarketing #emailmarketingstrategy