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Email marketing delivers an impressive return of $36-$42 for every dollar invested—that's 10-20 times better than paid advertising. Even more compelling? 50% of consumers make a purchase from an email every single month.

But there's a catch. Simply writing great emails isn't enough. Success lies in understanding what happens beneath the surface—the technical foundations, strategic elements, and engagement tactics that drive real results.

After over 20 years in marketing, working with hundreds of small business owners across dozens of software platforms, plus extensive research into what actually moves the needle, I've identified 7 key email engagement drivers that that reliably convert lukewarm subscribers into engaged buyers.

(Psssst.... these 7 drivers are the foundation of my Engaging Emails course so if you want to get the exact strategy and shortcuts for each, check it out here).

Driver 1: Conversion-Focused Email Design

9 seconds - that’s how long people are looking at emails for on average.

Of those opened, only 11% are read thoroughly.

And 57% are Skimmed.

Your emails need to do a lot with that time and limited attention. And while on the surface emails may look simple. Underneath, there is a lot of work that is done to make sure you beat that 9 seconds.

The Foundation Layer: First, you need to ensure subscribers can even see the email properly. We're dealing with tech, different devices, different computers, and different abilities. This means being mobile responsive—50% of non-mobile optimised emails are deleted within the first 30 seconds.

Things like Outlook rendering affect design.

Dark mode matters too—34% of people view emails in dark mode right now. Have you tested your emails to see what they look like in dark mode? Can your calls to action still be seen?

We're also talking about load times. How long does your email take to load, and are people giving up before they even get to the point?

Accessibility Matters:  One in six people have a disability, 80% of which aren't immediately visible. We need to think about supporting screen readers, making text easy to read with good contrast, having great touch target sizing so links are big enough to click, and considering neurodivergent people by making things scannable and easy to understand.

Design for Conversion: Then there's the design of the email itself—that scanability and structure. Ensure the most important details are in the first part of the email, make calls to action clear, don't rely too much on images, and maintain cohesive professional branding.

A lot more to think about than you thought hey? But don't worry - you don't need to spend 5 hours creating every email.

My quick tip: Create a master template with all the content blocks, the accessibility settings and the branding you need. Get it right once, then use it time and time again—just select template, drag and drop content blocks, type your words, done.

Driver 2: Strategic Content Creation

In Survivor there’s this term called “Social Capital”. It’s when someone has the reputation, relationships and trust equity with other players resulting in how well you can influence them into taking actions that ultimately benefit you. And hopefully even if you vote them out they will still vote for you to win in the end.

It’s what you don’t see on the edited show:

• The personal conversations, asking questions, finding common ground.
• Being of value by helping around camp and contributing in challenges
• Checking in regularly with everyone
• Keeping your word (most of the time)
• Adapting your approach to each player and the shifting alliances

Building Email Social Capital: It's no different with email, except you're not doing the blindsiding or lying part.

To get sales, you need to build social capital with your email list. This means not only emailing when you have something to sell.

Sales has its place, but it's the work between the sales that gets results.

You need to be strategic about what content you send and when.

Think a mix of:

• Sharing stories that help find common ground
• Asking questions and starting conversations
• Being genuinely helpful through content and answering FAQs
• Building trust with testimonials, case studies and user generated content

Do all of that consistently, and when you make the ask, you've built that social capital and sales will follow.

My quick tip: Align your marketing emails with your promotional strategy. Have themes, have a calendar in place, and build content in line with that. Create a mix of content types—not just sales emails, but helpful content emails and engagement-focused emails..

Driver 3: Spam-Proof Deliverability

This is probably the one you might have your head in the sand about, or hopefully you've got it figured out. Everyone's fear is ending up in the spam folder after putting in all this effort writing emails, then someone says "I didn't get it" and you panic that your emails went to spam.

Technical Setup: When you first set up email marketing, there are authentication and deliverability factors to set up right from the start. This is basically setting up things on the back end of your website and DNS records to say your email software has permission to use your domain name and email address to send emails.

Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple Mail don't want their users spammed. With all the spoofing going on, they want to ensure people sending emails are legitimate. These technical things need doing on the back end—luckily, it only happens once.

Building Sender Reputation: We also need to build sender reputation, which is all about engagement metrics. We want to send emails people are opening—content people actually want, not just sales emails. We need to provide plenty of opportunities to click because as soon as users take those actions, Gmail thinks "Oh, they like those emails, I'll continue showing them."

Conversely, if nobody's opening or clicking over time, your sender reputation goes down the gurgler. We need to consistently send emails that get clicks and opens to boost reputation so emails stay in the inbox. Plus, it builds great habits with users.

It's like one big circular pattern.

My quick tip: Set up authentication once, then focus on consistently sending content that generates engagement. The engagement itself becomes your best deliverability strategy.

Which leads to...

Driver 4: Open & Click Rate Boosters

Even with great design (nobody opens emails they can't read properly), good content (people only open and click things they're interested in), and deliverability (no one opens if emails aren't delivered), there are specific tactics that can push your engagement rates higher.

You can improve open rates through tactics such as:

• Mixing up your "Sender Name"
• Subject line testing and optimisation
• Including your subscribers first name in the subject line
• Preview text that complements your subject line
• Using send time optimisation

And your clicks by:

• Focusing on a single call to action with multiple links
• Multiple, varied click opportunities throughout your email including stand out buttons
• Clear benefit-focused language
• Clickable polls or links to popular resources

These of course are just a few of the many ideas you can implement.

My quick tip:  Don't rely on just one type of call to action or engagement request. Mix up what you're asking people to do—sometimes it's reading more content, sometimes it's sharing, sometimes it's purchasing.

Unsure if you are doing well?

Get familiar with your stats. You may be doing better than you think. If you want to get a good guide as to whether you are doing well or not and specific advice on what you can do to improve, you can take the free Email Engagement Check-up quiz here (no opt in required).

Driver 5: Sales Conversion Strategies

This is where everything comes together. You've built the relationship, delivered value, and earned trust. Now it's time to convert.

The LIFT® model provides a framework for increasing conversions:

Increase Relevance: Make the offer relevant to who you're sending it to through segmenting (covered later) and language that makes whatever you're offering apply to the person receiving it.

Increase Clarity: Be super clear about what the offer is and how it helps. Visually, this goes back to design—make calls to action obvious, focus on benefits, have clear language, flow, and structure in emails.

Decrease Distraction: Not only in well-designed emails, but when someone clicks that link, it should take them straight to checkout or the booking form. They shouldn't get a bunch of other steps, shouldn't have to wait to fill out a form then get a reply and access a 10-step sales process. Make it quick, make it easy, avoid distractions.

Reduce Anxiety: Put in social proof, talk about guarantees and shipping times, ask and answer specific questions and concerns people have through your words or visual graphics in emails.

Create Urgency: This is really the number one thing in sales conversion—how can we make them take action now instead of next week or next month? You can do this through internal urgency (if someone's wedding date is coming up, they need to order by now) or external urgency (promotional offers, limited quantities, pop-up offers).

My quick tip: Leverage your email template to include your core conversion boosting information. Things like icons with risk reversals or preheader banners with your current offer.

Driver 6: Essential Automations

Email automation is all about meeting people where they are right now. This is what sets email apart from other marketing channels—you can welcome someone new to your list who's never heard of you before, or give something extra special to someone who's purchased from you for the 10th time, or recover an abandoned cart, or provide onboarding for new bookings.

Automated emails generate 320% more revenue than your campaigns because of this precise timing and relevance. If you're sitting there with just bare minimum automations—a welcome email, maybe abandoned cart recovery—you're missing out big time.

The Power of Automation: The biggest benefit is that automations run without you. This is literal sales in your sleep. Build out a robust automation strategy and your reliance on regular campaigns drops significantly because you're still reaching people via email whenever they're actively engaging with you.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle. You can see who's opening and clicking, then send additional emails based on those actions, continuing to boost engagement. It keeps building and building upon itself.

Strategic Implementation: Different business types need different automations—e-commerce, services, and digital creators each have specific automation needs. The key is layering in your sales elements, urgency tactics, design strategies, and content approaches throughout these automated sequences.

My quick tip: Focus on getting your essential automations right first. These will handle the majority of your automated email needs while you sleep.

Driver 7: Smart Segmentation & Personalisation

According to HubSpot, segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than unsegmented campaigns. Campaign Monitor reported a 760% increase in revenue. That's not a small amount—that's not something you should ignore.

This comes back to those conversion factors and relevance. If you've got the timing right with your automations, imagine how much better results get when you combine that with what you know about people—their behavioural triggers, interests, category, stage, and topics they care about. When you talk to them with content and information that's relevant to them at that exact time and aligned with their interests and stage, that's powerful. That's what gets people across the line.

Addressing the Spam Concern: One of the biggest concerns from small business owners is not wanting to seem spammy or annoying. They know a proportion of their audience won't find certain emails relevant, and they don't want to send irrelevant content to them. Segmenting is the answer.

Data Collection Made Simple: You can get segmentation data from integrations with other software, behavioural tracking in your email marketing platform, or by asking simple questions. Interestingly, stats show people actually sign up quicker when there's a third question at signup because it shows you're interested in them and will provide relevant content.

Quality Over Quantity: Sometimes we get caught up thinking it's a numbers game—more people on the email list, more emails sent, more effectiveness. But actually, it comes down to timing and sending relevant content. That's much more effective, more useful for your time, more efficient, and it boosts engagement scores, which means better deliverability and more purchases. It all ties together.

Quick Tip: Don't overthink segmentation initially. Start with basic segments based on actions people have taken or interests they've shown, then build from there.

Your Next Steps

These 7 Email Engagement Drivers work together to create an email marketing system that consistently delivers results. While it might seem overwhelming to tackle everything at once, even improving one driver can make a significant difference to your business.

Ready to implement these strategies? Engaging Emails walks you through each driver with practical, step-by-step guidance designed for everyday business owners.