Hi! I’m trying to figure out if recipients of our newsletter have been engaging more with the content of the newsletter, but the answer seems to be complicated by some factors.
For starters, clickthrough rate has gone up, which would indicate more engagement….except the open rate has gone down. A lower open rate can easily raise the clickthrough rate, even though the actual number of people clicking in the email remains unchanged.
So to dig further, I see that the dip in open rate is about 3%, but the rise in clickthrough rate is about 10%. This seems to indicate that, yes, there actually is greater engagement with the content. Except…
When I look at the click rate, it has remained relatively constant, with a deviation overtime that has remained under 0.25%.
So what is the story this all tells? If not for the consistent click rate, I’d say that engagement has increased based on the clickthrough rate (despite the modest dip in open rate). However, the click rate has me questioning this assumption. Does anyone have any insights based on this? What does all this say about engagement with content?
A rise in CTR and fall in Open rate is a positive indication on the content front but a risky indication on the strategy front. This means that the appearance, body, content and styling of the email is something that doesn’t disappoint viewers and they go ahead and click on the CTA. However, the subject line or topic, the time the email is sent or other factors might be the reason behind declining open rates.
It thus becomes important to analyse and take quick actions before it declines even more.
These are the common practices that must be inculcated in order to prevent further decline in open rate:
Your open rate will fall if you send a lot of emails and subscribers start feeling getting spammed. Other scenario can be where you’re sending very less emails which would result in a discontinued interest in your emails. Hence, make iterations in your sending frequency and analyse the results.
Personalize your email subject in every mail possible and let your subject be captivating enough to open the email and read what it’s about.
Make sure you add accurate and interesting preview or maybe put up a relatable question there so the subscribers get curious to know more about it.
Send the emails at the right time when they’re most likely to be opened by subscribers. This you can do by analysing mails over a period of time and using the right data to take strategic decisions.
Use a recognizable sender name and add your brand logo next to email with BIMI so that people get familiar to your emails and open them without thinking it’s a spam.
Use analytics and compare various campaign reports because it might be possible that users are not interested in a specific type of campaign emails and hence, they skip opening it.
Ensure you follow these basic best practices which do wonders in a long run. Also, the Marketing hub of HubSpot contains an Email marketing tool that has got amazing features along with campaigns and reports. Explore them deeper as those features can help quite a lot. To discuss further on this issue, feel free to get in touch.
In my experience, this has been the most frequent discussion our team gets into.
In a nutshell, clickthrough rate and timespent is a good way to see the engagement but if the open rate is dropping that would signfy that audience is relating it less with the subject line/preview text. And that, tells us that these emails are narrowing down to the right type of audience.
