Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

The Final Engagement Rule You Must Remember

People are busy. Busier than ever, actually. And no one likes to waste time. If you have something to say, say it. If not, don’t waste anyone’s time. The “little boy who cried wolf” scenario absolutely applies to your email messages. If you talk to your constituents enough, without anything valuable to say, they aren’t going to believe you when you finally deliver something of value. That means your engagement is sunk until you can convince them to forgive you for crying wolf in the first place.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: One of my favorite things about email is that any size organization, with any size budget, can execute on these principles. It all comes down to the right content, execution, and tracking tools. If your tools aren’t easy to use, you’ll face so much execution pain, you’ll never have the time necessary to focus on engagement and maximize your interaction with constituents.

Much of what we’ve covered so far hinges on segmentation, which we will delve into in much greater detail in an upcoming chapter. In fact, assume that every recurring theme that hasn’t been explained in great detail will be explained in a later chapter.

Earlier, I asked whether you’d consider an email with the following characteristics successful: 30 percent of the recipients who typically interact with your messages did nothing; 30 percent who typically ignore the message interacted for the first time.

The answer is that it was successful ...