List growth versus list engagement and which one pays

4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Introduction

Subscriber count is the number people report, and it is close to meaningless on its own. A list of two thousand where four hundred read anything is worse in every respect than a list of four hundred who all do: worse deliverability, worse response, higher cost, and a figure that makes the whole channel look like it is working when it is not.

The two objectives genuinely pull against each other. The tactics that grow a list fastest — incentives, gated downloads, pre-ticked boxes, competition entries — add people who wanted the thing rather than the contact. Growth achieved that way costs engagement, and engagement is what produces the enquiries.

1. List growth versus list engagement is a trade, not a sequence

The framing.

Growing first and engaging later does not work, because the people acquired badly do not become engaged. The acquisition method determines the engagement. This is why lists built quickly rarely recover, however good the content becomes afterwards.

2. Judge the list on what it produces

The measure that matters.

Enquiries and revenue from people on it. Subscriber count is an input, and reporting inputs as results is the specific error this whole area invites. Ask how many customers last year had been on the list first.

3. Ask where each subscriber came from

The diagnostic.

Some sources produce engaged readers and some produce dormant addresses. Tagging by source and comparing engagement six months later tells you which tactics to keep. One tag at sign-up makes this possible and it is almost never recorded.

4. Be suspicious of incentives

The category to examine.

A prize draw or a discount produces subscribers who wanted the prize or the discount. Some are real prospects; most are not, and the average engagement of the list falls. The growth is visible immediately and the cost appears months later, which is why the tactic persists.

5. Prefer sources with intent

The alternative.

People who enquired, bought, attended something, or asked for a specific useful thing. Slower, smaller, and they read what you send. A hundred of these outperform a thousand acquired by competition.

6. Remove the dormant deliberately

The counter-intuitive maintenance.

People who have not opened anything in a year are lowering your deliverability for everybody else. Removing them improves the performance of the list that remains. Send one message asking whether they want to stay, then remove the non-responders.

7. Watch engagement as a rate, not a total

The metric correction.

A rising number of readers on a much faster growing list is a declining rate. Both figures together tell you what is happening; either alone misleads. Track the rate monthly rather than the count.

8. Set an acquisition standard

The discipline.

Decide what a subscriber has to have done to be worth adding. This is the point at which the trade is made deliberately rather than by whatever tactic was most convenient. Write it down so it survives the next quiet quarter.

9. Report both numbers side by side

The reporting fix.

Total subscribers and active readers, every month. This makes it impossible to celebrate growth that is diluting the list, which is the usual failure.

Consent obtained through incentives, competitions and bundled sign-ups is an area where the rules differ by jurisdiction and where pre-ticked boxes and unclear opt-ins are specifically problematic in several. Clean acquisition is a compliance benefit as well as an engagement one.

Conclusion

Judge the list on what it produces rather than on how large it is.

Recognise that acquisition method determines engagement, tag subscribers by source and compare engagement later, be sceptical of incentives that attract people who wanted the incentive, prefer sources where somebody demonstrated intent, remove dormant addresses to protect deliverability, watch engagement as a rate rather than a total, set a standard for what makes somebody worth adding, and report subscriber count and active readers side by side.