subject: Email Engagement Checklist 2 [print this page] Is my message the appropriate length? Contrary to popular belief, short is not always better. Testing has proved that long copy versions can generate a better response rate. Yes, thats a key point: You must test. Without trying messages of various lengths, you wont know if your recipients prefer short, succinct messages, or longer emails with more content. Regardless of the length that works for your organization, you must still get your overall message across in the first few lines. Dont make people hunt for it, or youre wasting the precious time that they could spend doing something rather than looking for what it is you want them to do.
Is my subject line power ful? The subject line is important because if its a bore or totally irrelevant, your constituents arent going to bother opening your message. Thats why the subject line should read like a billboard, clearly calling out the whats in it for me? specifics. Subject lines should also be continually tested, which well cover in more detail later.
Will my message even reach my audience? Email deliverability presents problems for many organizations. One easy way to increase your chances of deliverability is by asking your subscribers to add you to their email address book. Once youre added, you can generally be assured that you will not wind up in the junk or spam filter. If your message gets caught in a folder that your recipients never check, youve already lost your chance for engagement with them.
Am I paying attention to the right metrics? Your open rate is simply the percentage of all the email you send, divided by the number of those emails that are opened. The calculation is straightforward, but presents problems concerning how it relates to measure of engagement success.
First and foremost, the open rate indicates an impression. Thats it. By registering an open, you assume that the subscriber has had a chance to see the message. However, you have no idea if the subscriber has actually engaged with the message.
The only way to measure an open rate is by including a tiny image (usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel gif or jpeg) within the email. Since the text and graphics are served at different times (and only combined when you click on the email to open it), tracking devices constitute a call to that tiny image as an open.
For impression advertising, this may be an okay metric. For someone trying to get a close read on initial engagement, its a really poor measurement.
You should know that as we sit here mid-decade, approximately 50 percent of all email clients (such as AOL, Outlook, and Gmail) dont display any graphics. That means if youre relying on creative design to drive engagement, you have a big problem. The problem has only been worsened by handheld devices, which well delve into with our next checklist. While open rates arent a great read on engagement, I do think its important to pay attention to click rates because they will help you determine initial engagement. You should pay very close attention to conversions, ROI, and revenue. So what if you get 90 percent unique clicks on an email if no one signs up for what youre promoting? That means you created initial interest but did not seal the deal.
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