How email engagement magically boosts inbox placement
In short: Mailbox providers decide inbox placement largely by how recipients respond to your emails and by your domain's reputation, so engagement is your best lever. Send targeted, well-designed, mobile-friendly emails from a recognizable sender with a working reply-to address, test with A/B campaigns, ask for feedback, and send at the right time. Judge your progress by clicks and replies, since Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens.
Mailbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo! and others have been validating a lot of data points like spammy content, email engagement, and user interests to offer inbox placement —i.e. the number of emails that actually reach an inbox as opposed to ending up in the spam folder.
Among all the mailbox providers, Gmail gives more importance to email engagement, which they've considered the primary factor to determine inbox placement since 2018. Also, Gmail collectively analyzes the interest recipients show towards your emails to determine your domain reputation, another important element in whether or not your emails reach contacts' inboxes. If your email deliverability has taken a hit, and if most of your contacts are Gmail users, it indicates that your contacts using Gmail aren't engaging with your emails.
Engagement is more than opens. Positive signals include clicking links, replying, marking a message as "not spam", and adding the sender to a contact list, while deleting an email without opening it, marking it as spam, or ignoring it count against you. Google has retired the Domain and IP Reputation dashboards in Postmaster Tools, so use the Spam rate and Compliance status dashboards in Google Postmaster Tools and your own engagement numbers to see how Gmail is treating you. Google asks senders to keep their spam rate below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%.
No worries! You can incorporate the following techniques into your email and marketing strategies to improve both email engagement and deliverability.
Sending targeted emails
People prefer receiving emails that address their needs and interests over vague generic emails. Sending targeted emails creates a personalized experience for your leads and will keep them engaged, which we mentioned was the most important factor in improving inbox placement and email deliverability. To send targeted emails, you must analyze your lead's interests, group leads who share similar interests, and then send relevant emails to them. Learn more about sending targeted emails.
Craft engaging emails
An email campaign with an attractive email design, attention-grabbing images, easy-to-access CTAs, and content that is relevant to the recipient is more dynamic in nature and will spur your recipient's interest. When you send such engaging emails on a regular basis, it is more likely that recipients will keep visiting your emails often and your emails will be more likely to land in their inbox.
A/B testing
Using the A/B testing tool, you can create two different versions of a campaign, send it to a section of your leads, and compare the performance of the campaigns. Then you can send the campaign that had the higher click rate to the remaining leads. Decide on clicks rather than opens, because Apple Mail Privacy Protection can inflate open rates. You can also test campaigns with different subject lines and CTAs.
Mobile optimization
In recent times, people have reduced the time they spend reading emails using a computer and prefer reading emails on their mobile phones. So to suit smart phones is something you should never forget to do. You can design your campaigns with mobile-friendly templates and test them on various devices to ensure their readability. Designing email campaigns with mobile-optimized email templates and easy-to-access CTAs will definitely improve your email engagement.
Requesting feedback
Requesting feedback from your contacts will help you understand what they expect from your emails. You can send feedback forms and add polls and surveys to your campaigns to get feedback from email recipients. Then you can use that feedback to improve the quality of emails you send. See how to request feedback in a win-back campaign.
Sender recognition
People are most likely to engage with emails when it comes from a source they recognize and trust. You must ensure you send emails with an easily recognizable email address along with the sender name, a crisp email subject, a consistent email format, and relevant content to gain the trust of your email recipients and keep them engaged. Authenticate your sender domain too, so mailbox providers can verify that the email is really from you: see domain authentication.
Learn more about building positive recognition for your email campaigns
Having a reply-to address
When you send email campaigns without a reply-to address, it becomes a one-way communication as there won't be a channel where recipients can interact with you. Giving people a way to reach you will improve engagement and deliverability as ESPs and ISPs will be convinced that you are not a spammer. See why you should avoid no-reply addresses in marketing.
Send time optimization
Sending emails to leads during the wee hours of the morning means your email is more likely to get missed. It can also sometimes irk them and lead to unsubscribes. Sending email campaigns to leads after knowing their time zone and during the time they are more likely to check their mailbox is an ideal way to increase email engagement. Zoho Campaigns can send at each recipient's time zone or at their optimal open time; see send and schedule email campaigns.
Email engagement always plays a major role in determining email marketing's success. Crafting effective email content and strategies that work for your line of business goes a long way towards keeping email recipients engaged and getting the best returns from your email marketing handle.