Engagement Metrics: Listen for the Sound of Customers Leaving

Virtually any marketer can expand the use of email metrics beyond opens and clicks into those used by mailbox providers to assess subscriber engagement. Here are three key engagement measures that winning email marketers monitor to get early indications of weakening customer relationships:

1. Deleted without reading: Your messages are being ignored. A significant uptick in this early warning metric is a clear indicator that subscribers are losing interest in your messages. If people who once valued your email aren’t taking the time to even open your messages, your relationship is in trouble. Now is the time, at the first sign of disinterest, to think about how to re-engage them. Tactics include retesting and possibly changing your subject lines, studying and adjusting sending frequency to audience segments that have begin ignoring more email, or re-evaluating timing to see if there’s a better day or time of day to engage key segments.