When it comes to email marketing, audience engagement helps you gauge if your message resonates. Email marketers can look at who’s opening their messages, clicking on links, and more. The metrics show you what’s connecting with your audience.

Eighty-seven percent of marketers say email marketing serves as an essential driver to their companies’ success. In particular, 64% of small businesses use this important, accessible tool. But email marketing works only if people engage with what you send—which is why tracking and optimizing email engagement matters to your bottom line. Here’s how to track your email engagement metrics, calculate each rate, and implement strategies that boost subscriber interaction.

What is email engagement? 

Email engagement refers to the way your audience interacts with your marketing emails. It measures whether your communication actually works. High email engagement can drive your brand to reach a wide audience of existing and potential consumers.

Think of email engagement as the heartbeat of your email marketing strategy—it tells you whether your messages are connecting or flatlining. Opens, clicks, replies, and unsubscribes all reveal how your audience feels about what you’re sending.

Strong engagement signals that your subject lines grab attention, your content motivates action, and your timing aligns with when people want to hear from you. Weak engagement signals something’s off—your targeting, tone, value proposition, or email list hygiene.

Essential email engagement metrics 

• Delivery rate
• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Unsubscribe rate

Email engagement strategy focuses on multiple factors, so assessing it through different lenses is important. Here are a few of the most important metrics to track:

Delivery rate

A high email deliverability rate means your emails land in inboxes rather than spam folders. Boost deliverability by keeping a clean subscriber list, authenticating your domain, and avoiding spammy tactics like misleading subject lines and excessive links. Target 95% and above for a strong, healthy email base. Calculate delivery rate with this formula:

Delivery rate = (Number of emails delivered / Total number of sent emails) x 100

Open rate

Your email open rate is the percentage of subscribers who opened your message. Aim for an open rate of 20% to 40%. Here’s how to calculate it:

Open rate = (Number of opened emails / Total number of recipients) x 100

Click-through rate

This metric gauges how many recipients clicked a link in your email and continued engaging with your brand, whether on a product landing page, external newsletter, or other outside reference point. Generally, you’ll aim for a CTR of around 2%. The formula:

Click-through rate = (Number of recipients who clicked on the link / Total number of emails delivered) x 100

Conversion rate

Since digital marketing is key to driving sales, your email will likely encourage subscribers to perform an action (e.g., make a purchase or pay for a service). The conversion rate measures how many recipients completed that specific action. An average conversion rate above 2.5% is good. Here’s the formula:

Conversion rate = (Number of people who performed action / Total number of emails delivered) x 100

Unsubscribe rate

Your unsubscribe rate is the ultimate measure of disengagement. Use audience analysis to determine which customer segments are most likely to unsubscribe, and adjust your approach to hold their interest. Across the board, ecommerce unsubscribe rates tend to be below 0.2% Here’s the formula:

Unsubscribe rate = (Number of recipients who unsubscribed / Total number of emails delivered) x 100

How to improve email engagement rates

• Write compelling email content
• Cultivate a healthy email list
• Utilize a reengagement campaign
• Personalize emails
• Consider timing and sending frequency

Understanding your metrics is only the first step. Calculating and assessing your numbers reveals where you can improve. Here’s how to act on those insights:

Write compelling email content

Content that captures attention generates better engagement. The subject line is your first chance to capture a subscriber’s attention. Make it short yet informative. Keep your character count for subject lines less than 50 characters (around three to six words) so recipients can skim it easily on their phone.

Seventy-three percent of email marketers report that incorporating emojis boosts email performance. Once subscribers open your message, the email itself should also contain relevant and interesting copy that speaks directly to your consumers or new customers.

Dynamic content also drives engagement. Incorporate carousels of your customers’ favorite products, embedded videos, quizzes, or polls. Consider an interactive newsletter to stand out among your competitors.

Cultivate a healthy email list 

Building an email list organically ensures a strong base of engaged subscribers. By encouraging sign-ups from existing customers or attracting new subscribers already interested in your brand, you know they are—or at least once were—engaged. Clean it regularly, removing unengaged subscribers to keep your list relevant and reduce spam complaints.

Utilize a reengagement campaign 

Launch an email campaign that triggers renewed interest—extend a special offer, discount code, or limited-edition product. Reengagement emails can deliver a survey or even a single question: whether they still want to hear from you. If they do, it will prompt renewed interest—if not, removing them will only bolster your engagement rate.

Personalize emails 

Divide up your subscriber base depending on various factors, including demographics, consumer behavior, and past purchases or services. Personalized emails pique more interest, keep subscribers engaged, and strengthen customer retention. Which products do your customers buy repeatedly? Which categories do they browse most? By sending marketing emails that contain precisely what is relevant to each audience segment, you can increase engagement rates and customer loyalty.

Consider timing and sending frequency 

Use A/B testing (comparing two versions of the same email at different times) to find the optimal time for a particular campaign. Testing also reveals how many messages to send per week. Too many could cause email fatigue—too few can lose your audience’s interest.