How to Use Email Activity Scoring to Achieve Behavioral Segmentation

As we’ve discussed previously, the more active your email list, the greater your email deliverability. However, measuring subscriber activity can pose significant challenges. For example, what if an inactive subscriber is actually an active email user on other lists, but not yours? Armed with the insight offered by email activity scoring, you can vastly improve the overall effectiveness of your own emails.

What Is Email Activity Scoring?

Email activity scoring is a cutting-edge service that takes into account several data points, including email opening activity, social media accounts and website registration. The service tracks email addresses and assigns a score on the likeliness an account is to engage, based on the contact’s previous actions.

As a result, you’ll enjoy a greater understanding of each email address on your list. Active, engaged addresses automatically rise to the top for re-engagement campaigns, while inactive and potentially unsafe addresses are quickly identified.

How Can Companies Use Email Activity Scoring to Target Leads?

Use email activity scores to segment your entire list according to subscriber behavior. You’ll end up with roughly three categories:

• 1. Highly engaged subscribers who are ready to be fast-tracked to sales
• 2. Moderately engaged subscribers who may respond best to a nurturing campaign
• 3. Poorly engaged subscribers who are unlikely to respond

The most productive place to start is with the first group: highly engaged subscribers. Offer these subscribers targeted, relevant offers designed to quickly engage and convert them. Consider sending these subscribers a coupon or other compelling incentive, with a tight time limit in order to encourage the subscriber to take action immediately.

The next segment to assess is your moderately engaged subscribers. For these addresses, an ongoing lead nurturing strategy may be your best option to re-engage these previously dormant names. Consider starting these subscribers on a steady drip campaign, sending relevant content (think white papers, blog posts, etc.) every two to four weeks.

And finally, take a good, hard look at the final category: poorly engaged subscribers. If you continue to send emails to addresses that are no longer valid or relevant to your list, you risk damaging your sender reputation and creating bigger deliverability problems for your entire list. Consider pruning these inactive addresses from your list completely to protect your sender reputation and bounce rate.

As you adapt email activity scoring into your ongoing marketing strategy, you’ll soon realize one of the biggest benefits to scoring is the ability to target communications on a one-to-one level. With the insights you gain, you’ll be able to develop highly targeted messages that convert interested buyers, re-engage dormant subscribers and allow you to confidently remove old or dead email addresses. As a result, you’ll elevate the results you see across the board.

Looking for more ways to boost email engagement? Download this free guide on TowerData’s Email Activity Score solutions!