Email Engagement Report – Q1 2023
Intro
Each quarter, we publish email engagement stats from Omeda clients into one report, so you can see how you stack up against the competition and better connect with your audience. In this report, we’re analyzing data from more than 1.6 billion emails sent through our platform in Q1 2023.
And this quarter, there’s no escaping the worsening economic outlook — and its implications for marketers. According to the latest projections, 58% of economists expect a recession to begin in 2023.
Whether the recession is short or long, deep or shallow, or whether it happens at all, remains to be seen. But regardless, every email marketer is going to find themselves doing more with less this year.
So in addition to our usual analysis, our report’s focusing on ROI this quarter. Here’s what we’ve got on deck:
- Overall email engagement
- Performance by deployment type, including a deep dive into promotional email engagement since Q3 ‘22
- A review of our recent re-engagement campaign — and takeaways for your own re-engagement efforts
- Best practices for weathering economic downturns through email
Overall Comparison
Formula Reference
Delivery Rate = Delivery / Sent
Total Open Rate = Total Opens / Delivered
Unique Open Rate = Unique Opens / Delivered
Total Click Rate = Total Clicks / Delivered
Unique Click Rate = Unique Clicks / Delivered
Total CTR = Total Clicks / Total Opens
Unique CTR = Unique Clicks / Unique Opens
Unsubscribe Rate = Unsubscribes / Delivered
Complaint Rate = Complaints / Delivered
The state of email engagement in 2023
Last quarter was marked by a sharp decrease in email engagement, driven partly by the holiday lull as well as category-specific trends.
But engagement rebounded in the first quarter of 2023: Click rates increased by 9% and CTRs went up by 7.51%. This was driven largely by improvements in the newsletter and promotion categories, which combined to make up more than 70 percent of all emails sent through Omeda. (Click rates for newsletters and promotions increased by 8.40% and 4.57% in Q1, respectively.)
Performance by Deployment Type
Quarterly Changes in Metrics by Deployment Type
Quarterly Changes in Deployment Type by Metrics
Newsletters
Includes digital magazines & newsletters
- # of deployments: +6.34%
- Unique Opens: 33.51% (+2.85%)
- Unique Clicks: 2.02% (+8.60%)
- Unique CTR: 6.01% (+5.43%)
Newsletters saw a 6.45% decrease in click rates and a 5.7% decrease in CTR in Q4 2022. This quarter, newsletters made up ground and more, with click rates up 8.60% and CTR up 5.43% in Q1 2023.
If you’ve been with us for a while, you might’ve noticed that newsletters consistently outperform their promotional counterparts. So if you’re looking to shake up your advertising strategy this quarter (or you’re looking for more exposure), consider sponsorships in newsletters in conjunction with traditional paid advertising.
Surveys and Research
Includes reader service, research and surveys
- # of deployments: -8.96%
- Unique Opens: 32.87% (+13.27%)
- Unique Clicks: 0.55% (-9.83%)
- Unique CTR: 1.66% (-21.65%)
Our clients sent nearly 9% less surveys in Q1 2023 than they did in Q4, with click rates falling by 9.83% and unique CTR falling by 21.65%.
This decline can’t be explained solely by higher open rates, as survey and research emails earned nearly 14,000 less clicks in Q1 2023 than the previous quarter (66,016 clicks compared to 80,458).
More people are opening, but less are taking the intended action of completing the survey or reading the research. That suggests the issue for many senders isn’t getting attention, but translating it into action.
If your surveys and research haven’t gotten as much traction as desired, consider creating more precise segments, shortening your surveys, or ensuring your subject lines match the content within.
In this context, the dramatic drop in click-throughs makes sense. Because CTR is the number of clicks divided by the number of opens, either a decrease in clicks (the numerator of the equation) or an increase in opens (the denominator) will result in a lower CTR. This quarter, we got both, so click-throughs dropped by more than 20%.
It’s also important to note that surveys make up the smallest number of deployments sent through Omeda. This means that variations in a single client’s performance are more likely to have an outsize impact on overall category performance, than it might in the newsletter or promotion categories.
Events
Includes events, live conferences, virtual conferences and webinars
- # of deployments: -1.13%
- Unique Opens: 27.54% (-5.55%)
- Unique Clicks: 0.60% (-13.04%)
- Unique CTR: 2.16% (-9.24%)
Miscellanous Communications
Includes any communications that don’t fit into the other deployment categories
- # of deployments: -4.09%
- Unique Opens: 32.9% (+4.18%)
- Unique Clicks: 0.94% (+8.05%)
- Unique CTR: 2.86% (+3.63%)
Promotions
Includes advertiser promotion, audience promotion, marketing, third party and white papers
- # of deployments: -4.96%
- Unique Opens: 31.79% (-1.37%)
- Unique Clicks 0.72% (+2.86%)
- Unique CTR: 2.26% (+4.63%)
Clicks and click-throughs for promotional emails each dropped by more than 9% in Q4 2022. Promotions recovered (somewhat) this quarter with a 0.72% click rate and a 2.26% CTR, both increases over Q4.
But in the face of economic headwinds and advertising shortfalls, the pressure is on for marketers to figure out what kinds of promotions drive the most business.
So next, we’re looking at some of our promotional sub-categories to see what’s most effective — and how that might change in this uncertain economic landscape. (Note: We’ll be using click rate as our primary success metric in this section.)
Quarterly Changes in Click Rate For Promotional Deployment Types
Third party
- Unique open rate: 31.54% (-0.76% from Q3)
- Unique click rate: 0.64% (+6.01% from Q3)
- Unique CTR: 2.1% (+11.11% from Q3)
Over the past three quarters, third-party promotional emails have seen a notable rise in engagement, with click and click-through rates rising 6 and 11.11%, respectively, from Q3 ‘22 to Q1 ‘23.
This suggests that marketing to a third-party list can be as cost-effective and successful as own, in the right circumstances.
Just be sure that you use a permission-based list (where all list members have opted into communications from the main list owner, as well as third parties).
The best permission-based lists include lists of association members and publication subscriber lists. Because readers already have a relationship with the list owner, they’re more likely to trust that your emails and offers are legitimate and relevant for their needs.
White papers
- Open rate: 32.44% (-30.09% from Q3)
- Click rate: 0.55% (-56.70% from Q3)
- CTR: 1.66% (-39.42% from Q3)
In Q3 2023, white papers were one of the most successful promotional categories, getting 46.4% opens, 1.27% clicks, and 2.74% click-throughs.
Since then, engagement has dropped off significantly. Between Q3 ‘22 and Q1 ‘23, performance in all three engagement metrics have declined by more than a third: This quarter, white papers had a 0.55% click rate and 1.66% CTR.
In Q3, white papers were one of the highest-performing promotional emails (as measured by CTR), but now it’s the worst.
This pattern can’t be fully explained by changes in sending volume, as there’s been a wide variation in the last three quarters: Sends ranged from 30 million whitepapers in Q3 ’22, to 46 million in Q4 ’22, and 35 million in Q1 ’23. And since Q3 2023, there’s been a steady decline in the gross number of clicks: Overall clicks fell from 382,210 in Q3 ‘22 to 367,966 in Q4 ‘22 and a low of 193,832 this quarter.
Given their importance in lead generation and content marketing initiatives, we need to consider why white papers have underperformed as of late – and what that means for your strategy moving forward. Here’s what we think:
1. People are losing interest in the text-heavy white paper format. Reading a dense, research-heavy PDF requires more cognitive load than watching a video or flipping through a slideshow with the same information. So if you send your audience a dense white paper at 10am on Tuesday, when most of them are slammed with meetings, they’re probably not to click through to your research, regardless of its quality. If you want more views, present your findings in a more visual format (we use Flourish for our interactive charts! #notsponsored). Make this clear in your emails so your audience knows it’ll be a quick and painless read. Also consider sending your white paper on a Sunday – our research shows that white papers sent on Sundays earn the most clicks, likely because readers have more time to digest the content.
2. The conversion funnel is too clunky. Ten years ago, people had no problem submitting their email address in a lead form, waiting for the email that contained their whitepaper, then downloading the PDF-based whitepaper to their device. But now, busy professionals want to get their content and get out — without waiting to download an attachment to their device. If you’re not happy with your white papers’ conversion rates, consider hosting it on a webpage and using a website analytics solution (like Omeda) to identify and target your new content leads.
3. Audiences may no longer believe that white papers are helpful or credible. At their core, white papers (and other gated content) presents the customer with a value exchange: They take the effort to provide their contact info, download the asset, etc., and they get exclusive insights they can use to improve their work in a tangible way.
If companies don’t deliver their end of the bargain (and add the user to a 10-email drip campaign for their trouble)? Customers will feel misled — and ignore their content going forward. More companies use white papers as thinly veiled advertisements and/or sponsored content, which can turn subscribers away over time.
A review of our re-engagement campaign
Depending on what study you cite, it’s 4-10 times more cost-effective to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. While this research focused on paying customers, the same principle applies for email subscribers. And when you can’t spend as much on paid ads, in-person conferences, or other traditional lead gen activities, you need to prioritize easy wins.
Running a re-engagement campaign is one the best ways to do this, as you can earn incremental engagement without taking away from revenue-generating tasks. Not to mention that periodically cleaning your list protects your sender score and ensures your communications are more relevant. (Learn how to create more effective re-engagement campaigns here.)
Campaign setup and objectives
We recently ran our own re-engagement campaign, targeting subscribers who had received at least 5 emails in the last 90 days and had not opened any of them. We formatted this as a continuous journey in Odyssey (our marketing automation platform) so that more people would be added to the campaign once they met the criteria for “unengaged.”
Our re-engagement campaign initially ran for about five weeks and consisted of three emails sent one to two weeks apart.
Each email was concise and clear, telling them that they hadn’t engaged with us in a while and reminding them of the value of our content (so they knew what to expect if they remained subscribed).
We also linked to a landing page where they could confirm their interest in hearing from us. From there, they were provided a little more content they may have missed from us in the past few months. Recipients would continue to receive messages until they opened (or chose to unsubscribe).
We set up a Goal element on the Odyssey canvas to capture anyone who opened an email and met our goal of re-engagement, so they wouldn’t be inundated with additional emails in the subsequent weeks of the campaign.
We also added a Pathfinder element to the canvas so we could track anyone who did not meet our goal. Then, using Audience Builder, we built a query to pull in the audience from the Pathfinder element to see who remained unengaged.
Results
21% of the original audience met our reengagement goal during our initial five-week re-engagement campaign.
It’s important to note that we applied our re-engagement goal to several email types across our database so we could account for their interaction with our other emails, not just the re-engagement campaign. So if someone on the re-engagement list opened an email promoting our upcoming OX6 event during this time period, that counted towards the re-engagement goal as well.
Key takeaways
1. Keep your subject lines short and streamlined: Our re-engagement emails earned the most opens when our subject lines were simple and straight-forward (for example, using “It’s been a while 👋” v. “We noticed you’ve been distant lately”).
2. Encourage your recipients to act. We saw an increase in clicks and re-engagements when we used the phrase “Action required: confirm your preferences,” compared to less action-oriented wordings. This copy isn’t a hard sell, but it does urge the reader to take action if they want to continue hearing from us.
3. Experiment with your campaign criteria for maximum success: Our goal for this re-engagement campaign was to get more opens from subscribers that hadn’t engaged with us in 90 days.
But depending on your industry, list size, etc., these parameters may not work for you. Maybe you need to target and re-engage anyone that hasn’t engaged with you in 45 or 60 days. Or if your emails are more promotional than educational in nature, you may want to optimize for clicks instead of opens. Consider a range of variables to see what’s best for your needs and your audience.
Wrapping Up
While there’s no surefire way to recession-proof your email marketing, staying on top of your engagement metrics, list health, data quality and audience preferences can help you weather the worst of any downturn. Continuing to give your audience relevant offers and information tells them that they’re still top priority — and keeps them engaged and invested in your business. That alone can help you preserve customers and LTV during a downturn.
From there, maximize the ROI of your email with these tips:
1. Make it easy to sign up and convert. There’s never a good time to lose a subscriber due to a disjointed sign-up process or unwieldy lead forms. But in this uncertain landscape, mistakes are especially costly. To maximize subscriptions and conversions, ensure that your pipeline is as smooth and straightforward as possible. Start by shortening your subscription sign-up forms. Lead forms get the most completions when they have 5 fields or less. So if you’re seeing a lot of bounces right before the subscription phase, you’re probably asking your audience for too much information upfront. In this case, try limiting your forms to name and company email.
From there, you can use progressive profiling, Omeda’s website analytics solution, and CDP to gain additional information from your email subscribers over time — without turning them off. Also allow users to opt in and out of specific communication types via preference pages. If someone is on the fence about subscribing, giving them control over what they receive from you gives them the reassurance they need to sign up. They get useful content from you and you get incremental subscribers — it’s a win-win for all involved.
2. Double down on marketing automation. Timelines and budgets might be tight, but your customers still expect communications to be tailored to their specific needs, behaviors and preferences. You can’t choose between scale or specificity: To succeed in today’s landscape, you need both. Marketing automation is the single best way to achieve this at scale. Look for opportunities to create automated voyages, including welcome series, re-engagement campaigns, lead nurture and ABM campaigns, etc.
3. Prioritize segmentation and personalization. Every email requires time, labor and resources, all of which are in short supply in 2023. Make the most of each email (and maximize conversions) by personalizing each one to specific audience segments. While creating narrower segments requires more upfront work, it will pay off in the form of increased deliverability, engagement and conversions across your entire subscriber base. If you’re an Omeda customer, you can use a combination of 100+ demographic and behavioral filters to create hyper-specific customer segments, then activate them through automated email campaigns.
4. Harness your first-party data to maximize sponsorship ROI: As measured by click rates, newsletters are one of the most effective to reach audiences en masse. But the competition for advertising dollars is getting fierce, and newsletters are no exception. To attract more sponsors, build up your first-party data collection through surveys, website analytics, email reporting, etc. (and use Omeda’s CDP to unify all that audience data into one place).
5. Don’t limit your analysis to opens, clicks and CTRs. Opens, clicks and CTRs may tell you which emails work and which emails don’t. But they don’t tell you why. And to really maximize ROI from email, you need to know which offers, content, and CTAs are driving traffic for you.
So go beyond the basic engagement metrics — track individual UTM links, campaigns and your A/B tests to pinpoint exactly what’s clicking with your audience. If you’re an Omeda client, use our Tracking Links Clicked, Heat Map, and Open Click Analysis reports to see where you stand.
Finally, regularly view your email reports to identify your biggest success levers and spot opportunities to optimize. (Remember that our reports are based on averages of billions of emails — and what work for the “average” audience might not be ideal for yours!)
For more resources, check out our blog for advice on email marketing strategy and best practices or subscribe to our biweekly newsletter for the latest and greatest.
To get more information about how Omeda’s award-winning platform can help you navigate your email marketing automation strategy, reach out to your Client Success Manager or schedule a demo today.
