© 2011 Catalyst

How to Drive Higher ROI from Your Email Subscribers(Part 2)Growing Engagement

By Lora Downie, Digital Analyst-Email Marketing, Catalyst

July 13, 2011

The Path Toward Engagement

From Relevancy to Engagement Relevancy held the stage as email marketing’s buzz word for almost half a decade. But today, the spotlight shines bright on engagement.

But what is this thing marketers must innovate and ISPs are so determined to measure?

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What is Engagement?

Involvement, participation, commitment…all synonyms for the enigmatic word, “engagement.”

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How to Get Subscribers Engaged

Build a strategy on which every decision, whether it’s creative, technical, or usability-related, hinges on the answer to this question:

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“Does this drive involvement,

participation and commitment from our

subscribers?”

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Engagement: In Action

Engagement is a response to a well-planned, perfectly timed message that drives immediate and long-term behaviors.

It’s understanding a subscriber’s past, present and future behaviors and using them to shape your strategy.

Triggered Communications

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Triggered Communications= Optimized Revenue

Some would argue that promotional content sent to a broad audience drives revenue and engagement.

This “strategy” leaves money on the table because you are only tapping into a small percentage of your subscribers’ needs.

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Why is this Strategy Overlooked?

“I don’t have the resources to dedicate to planning and executing triggered programs.”

“I don’t have the right technology.”

“I don’t know how I will benefit from it.”

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The Power of Triggered Email

According to ExactTarget, real-time triggered email produces 10x greater conversion than blast email communication.

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Example: Remarketing

You know where your prospect or customer was, what they’ve placed in the proverbial shopping cart.

Now, direct their future behavior based on what you know and your business objectives.

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Example: Remarketing

Triggered shopping cart abandonment emailsTriggered reminder emailsTriggered anniversary emails

According to Exact Target, real-time triggered email

produces 10x greater conversion than blast email

communications

Measuring EngagementClicks, downloads and social influence

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The Devil’s in the Details

Each marketer needs to decide which engagement metrics define his or her objectives, then weight them accordingly.

Develop an engagement heuristic that factors these metrics and allows you to apply the formula to each subscriber record.

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The Devil’s in the Details

This window into your subscriber activity can be astounding, and it can chart the course for growth within your inactive and active subscriber segments.

Increasing EngagementLeverage your understanding of engagement to drive increased activity

Step 1

1. Identify your disengaged, moderately engaged and highly engaged segments.

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Step 2

2. You now have the data to make decisions about how to:

Reengage the lost: reattract and extract learnings to be applied for future acquisition/engagement effortsReinvigorate the moderates: confirm their motives, breathe life into their emails with profile/behaviorally targeted contentMaximize the already-engaged: treat them like royalty, provide incentives for social sharing, personally request testimonials, offer sneak peaks into new products

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Step 3

3. After you have a good handle on what an “engaged subscriber” looks like, then you can effectively tackle the job of growing your list by populating it with subscribers that resemble those highly engaged heavy-hitters.

Socialized Email MarketingHow to strategize cross-engagement

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The Law of Effect

Your subscribers, fans and followers are mostly savvy consumers. They have different objectives in social channels and email.

Don’t repurpose content. Users will lose confidence in your ability to be relevant, and disengage.

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The Law of Effect

If you aren’t driving value in each channel and creating a congruent voice, they will notice.

Engagement stretches beyond the inbox, and this cross-channel engagement can impact what’s going on in the inbox.

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You Must Have a Content Strategy

Leveraging your email strategy in social channels and vice versa is an absolute must. This is why a content strategy is critical for every business today.

A Word About the FutureSure, email brings in the revenue today, but what will it look like five years from now?

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The Future

We need to look no further than our palms to see it. IDC has reported that over 20% of all mobile phones are smartphones and they forecast smartphone shipments will grow by 55.4% this year.

Your emails and landing pages must be mobile viewing-ready.

Have a question? Want to learn more?Email me at ldownie@catalystinc.com. Be sure to download Part 1: Addressing Attrition and Part 3: Driving Growth.

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About the Author

Lora Downie specializes in email program strategy, design strategy and best practices at Catalyst, a Rochester, NY-based direct and digital marketing agency. She is a certified MarketingSherpa email specialist and has been published twice in DM News’ Email Marketing Guide.