Wanting to turn your email list into a money-making machine? If so, you need to be wary of your engagement rate AND make a conscious effort to increase it wherever possible. This article will explain exactly how to do that.
Engagement rate is a combination of your email’s open rate, click-through-rate (CTR) and conversion rate, all of which are crucial when trying to monetize an email list. Aside from wanting to make more money, you’ll want to increase your email engagement rate so as to avoid ending up in your subscriber’s spam folders.
The following methods will not only help you to increase your email engagement rate, but they will also help to turn your email subscribers into regular, paying clients. I’ve written these points in somewhat chronological order, so bear with me if the first few points seem fairly basic:
#1 – Warm Up your leads
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’ve tried cold emailing before. If you have, there’s an even greater chance that it didn’t really work out for you. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
The reason why cold emailing rarely works is because your leads have absolutely no idea who you are, and no amount of explaining is going to change that. Instead, you should optimize your marketing strategy to have your leads chasing you – rather than you chasing them!
In terms of email marketing, you do this by introducing a simple lead magnet offer.
A lead magnet is usually a product or service that is given away for free in return for a lead’s contact details, often being one’s email address. The purpose of the lead magnet is to get people into your sales funnel in order to then upsell them paid products & services down the line.
Lead magnets often come in the form of free trials, ebooks, webinars and more. As long as the barrier to entry is easy AND the perceived value of the product is high, it should be a fairly simple process getting people into your email list.
#2 – Double Opt-In
It surprises me how many times a client has told me that they don’t want to include a double opt-in with their lead magnets, not realising that it can do wonders for your email’s engagement rate.
Yes, double opt-in can dramatically reduce the number of people that end up joining your list, however, it’s a good way to ensure that the people that do join your list actually want to be there.
If they really wanted to get your freebie or hear more from you, they’d have no issue in taking 2 seconds to verify that they wanted to join your email list. If they do complete the double opt-in, it’s a small sign that it’s going to be much easier to upsell more products & services in the future.
And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, maybe the fact that it’s become law in Europe that you have to include a double opt-in when capturing people’s emails, otherwise you risk facing some pretty large financial penalties. You can read more about this [GDPR] here.
#3 – Segment Your List
I swear to you that this isn’t just my OCD talking when I say that segmenting your list will be a game-changer when monetizing your emails.
Pretty much all of the best email marketing platforms will give you the option to create multiple email lists and/or to add various tags to your subscribers.
You can often automate the latter when a subscriber performs a certain action, such as clicking on a link, purchasing a product or completing an online course. Meaning that you can create personalised emails in direct response to said action.
When you start to track and analyse your subscriber’s behaviours, you can begin to tailor your emails to suit their individual needs. For instance, if your main email list offers a wide variety of social media marketing tips, you can add tags to certain users that have displayed an interest in ‘Instagram Marketing’ and thus send them emails with Instagram tips & tricks.
At the same time, you can avoid sending such emails to those that have NOT shown an interest in such a topic. Basically, the more information you can collect from your list – the better you can serve them and thus make more money.
#4 – Improve your headlines
One of the core elements of engagement rate is your email open rate. For those of you that are new to email marketing, the open rate is the percentage of your email subscribers that have opened your email.
Obviously, the more people that open your emails – the better.
How do you increase that percentage though, I hear you ask? Well, you improve your email headlines.
The best way to do this is to capture your subscriber’s curiosity with the email title, leaving them no choice but to check out your email, purely because they’re so curious as to what it might be about.
For example, I’ve had great success in the past when sending out emails with headlines like “Quick Question”, which worked well for me because my subscribers were left curious as to what that question might be. They also knew that it wouldn’t take up too much of their time.
Of course, you don’t want to just copy & paste that headline and call it a day, as it’s probably been beaten to death by now. So, you should work on crafting your own headlines, always asking yourself “Would I open this email?” with each email that you draft.
Doing this will do a lot for improving both your open rate and your chances of successfully monetizing your email list.
#5 – Give, Give, Give.
It should go without saying that in order to make money from your list, you should make an effort to give value to your subscribers at every given opportunity. This selfless mindset will help to ensure that your subscribers actively look forward to receiving your next email.
On the flip side, if your subscribers are only getting emails from you as and when you’re trying to sell something then it’s very likely that they’ll hit that unsubscribe button pretty soon.
If you’ve subscribed to some of the best email marketers for long enough, you’ll notice how they’re always giving you small nuggets of information, motivation and at times; more free stuff!
All of this helps to keep their email list sweet and ensure that when they do come to advertise a new product or service, their email subscribers will be there waiting, eager to purchase from them.
#6 – Kiss
Don’t worry, I’m not about to ask you to send some inappropriate emails to your list. Instead, I want you to Keep It Simple, Stupid. A motto created in the 1960s which still holds true today.
A lot of marketers will use emails as a way to write a bible’s worth of content in one email, but that’s something that I rarely, if ever, advise.
I mean, have you noticed how online platforms like Vine, Snapchat & TikTok have become immensely popular over recent years? And why other platforms have adopted similar features, such as Instagram Reels & YouTube Shorts?
That’s because, with each passing generation, people’s attention spans seem to be shortening at an incredible rate. Basically, if you haven’t captured their attention within the first 6 seconds then they’re gone – onto the next.
And that’s how you should treat your emails nowadays.
Keep your emails simple and to the point. If you can do that, and consistently provide value, then I can assure you that you’ll find a lot of success in monetizing your email list.
#7 – Clean Up Your list
Okay so this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out…
One of the best ways to improve your email’s engagement rate is to start removing subscribers. Crazy right?
This may just sound like a fake guru ‘hack’ of improving your engagement rate but when you stop to think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Imagine this… You’ve been emailing someone for well over a year, and they’ve only opened half a dozen emails, not clicked on any links and certainly haven’t replied to any of your questions, the b***ards.
Do you think they’re interested in buying any of your products or services?
Of course not! So why should you keep them in your list? After all, it’s just a huge drain on your engagement rate AND you’re likely being charged for it by email marketing platforms who are charging you by the number of email subscribers you have.
That’s why it’s highly recommended to have a big clean-up every now and then, maybe every six months or so, to ensure that the people in your email list really deserve to be there or not. If not, remove them!
Conclusion
There are many ways that you can improve your email’s engagement rate, not least because you want to avoid spam folders and make money. These methods include warming up your leads, segmenting your list and cleaning said list up from time to time.
All of which will do well to improve your engagement rate and increase your level of success when it comes to monetizing your email list. Can you think of any other ways to improve your email engagement rate? I’d love to hear it.
Do you have any questions or feedback on the above article? Let me know in the comments below!
