Building a marketing newsletter with a ridiculous following is no small feat — but the whole idea is to drive business impact, right? When it comes to marketing, there are few KPIs more meaningful than engagement that provokes action.
Engagement, however, is evolving. It’s no longer about opens or clicks in isolation — it’s about the quality of the attention you grab. Readers are active participants in brand communities, and the most successful newsletters of 2025/2026 invite interaction, reflection and repeat visits.
Here, we’re going to explore how to revamp your newsletter engagement and zero in on growth and retention.
What Newsletter Engagement Is (and Why You Need It)
Historically, newsletter engagement referred to the number of your email newsletters that were actually opened. Let’s say you have 1.5k subscribers for a monthly distribution, and each month, 500 subscribers open your newsletter. Your engagement rate would have been 33% (the number of newsletters opened divided by the number of subscribers).
Realistically, getting your audience to open the newsletter is now only the first step to driving impact. Newsletter marketing is a highly effective (and profitable) channel for establishing authority in your niche, promoting your brand and converting leads — to name a few.
To achieve such high-value goals, it’s the marketer’s job to inspire action. These actions, the desirable behaviors that drive content marketing and business objectives, are what we now refer to as “newsletter engagement.”
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These actions might look like:
- Opening and reading the email (time spent and scroll depth, not just opens).
- Clicking a link or CTA.
- Forwarding or sharing the newsletter.
- Replying directly to the email.
- Registering for an event or downloading a resource.
- Following your brand on social channels.
- Consistently opening multiple issues over time.
In short, your newsletter engagement strategy is a two-way relationship. You bring insights, clarity and consistency — your readers bring trust and time. That’s the exchange you need to protect and strengthen.
Proven Strategies To Increase Newsletter Engagement
If your newsletter is already established, this is where you shift from maintenance to momentum. The goal isn’t to overhaul your whole strategy — it’s to cultivate what’s working and deal with what’s not. Think of it as a diagnostic check-up for your newsletter content.
Segment Audiences
In 2025 and 2026, you shouldn’t be sending the same newsletter to everyone in your audience. By analyzing behavior and intent, you can create smaller groups in your distribution list, such as new subscribers, buyers, inactive subscribers or high-value accounts. Then, you can tweak your content to address those groups directly. New readers will be interested in intros, storytelling and upfront value, whereas buyers might appreciate product tips and upsell ops.
To avoid writing a suite of emails monthly, figure out what your audiences have in common and what distinguishes them. Speak to broader value in the main body of your newsletter, then plug in relevant links, quotes, interactive media or calls-to-action (CTAs) that personalize the newsletter content for each segment. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.
Sharpen Your Subject Lines
Your subject should state, in eight words or fewer, how you’ll repay the reader’s time. Email inboxes are becoming increasingly noisy — in no small part thanks to the volume of newsletters arriving by the day — and simplicity and clarity enable your message to stand out.
Your audience’s time and attention are valuable, and the fact that they’ve allowed you to take up real estate in their inbox signals trust. To maintain that trust, you must not only promise value but actually deliver on it. That consistent delivery will deepen trust over time, making your audience even more likely to engage.
Make Personalization Personal
Personalization now requires you to think beyond the “Hey, [Name].” True personalization happens when your content reflects context, including:
- Similar content to what an individual read last time.
- Where the person sits in your funnel.
- What problems they’re trying to solve.
- Upcoming events in their region.
How do you achieve that? Gathering information at the point of subscription sets you up for data-driven segmentation and personalization straight away. For B2B, look at industry, company size, growth rate, number of employees or geographic region. For individuals, consider location, job, age, and any other data that helps you cement your newsletter in context.
For existing audiences, where you can’t gather those details at the outset, consider running polls — with 85% of B2B marketers using personalization in email marketing campaigns, it’s a metric you can no longer afford to let slide.
Design for the Thumb
Most people check newsletters when they may as well be half asleep: in line for coffee, between meetings, winding down at night. Keep your design clear and scannable by optimizing it for mobile scrolling. Here’s what I’m talking about:
- Single-column templates.
- 24-point titles and 16-point copy.
- Short, concise sentences.
- Mobile-optimized images.
- CTA placement above the scroll.
Beyond the visuals, ask your audience for only one or two actions per newsletter — otherwise, it becomes overwhelming. Clarity always wins.
Analyze Engagement Metrics and Iterate
The single most powerful thing you can do for your newsletter is to give the people what they want. That requires finding out what works, why and repeating it. The engagement metrics you should measure depend on your goals, the maturity of your email strategy and, in some cases, the subscriber’s journey:
- If your goal is brand awareness, your newsletter might be in its juvenile phase and/or your audience may be new to the rounds. Measure open rate, new subscribers and forward rate.
- If your goal is lead generation, your newsletter is probably maturing and/or your audience has been following you for a while. At this stage, track key metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate.
- If your goal is revenue, you’re running an established newsletter and/or your audience is near the bottom of the funnel, ready to upgrade or rebuy. Track sales and return on investment (ROI).
A/B Test, But Don’t Overthink It
A/B testing allows you to experiment with elements and determine which lands better with your audience. The value is that you’ll be sending a subject line, CTA or layout either way, so A/B testing lets you compare its performance with an alternative.
Keep notes, look for patterns and release the pressure to reinvent the wheel every cycle. It’s often the small changes (like the difference between “Get the guide” and “Learn more”) that bump engagement without rewiring your email newsletter strategy.
If you’re a sucker for punishment, you can get pretty granular in A/B testing for higher engagement. Test interactive elements, valuable insights, personalized content or linking a blog post with a high CTR and see what you can learn.
Bring Social Media Into the Game
In the age of content marketing, who doesn’t love socials? Two secondary ways social media channels can knock your newsletter strategy into next month are:
- Promoting your newsletter: Share your subscribe link and share intel into the value your newsletter offers.
- Generate original data: Genuinely involve your audience by creating original data through social media polls and incorporating audience perspectives in your newsletter. Reflecting your audience authentically in your content shows them your brand is equally engaged.
However, there is a more prominent social strategy emerging for your newsletter, and that’s LinkedIn. It’s now the most popular channel for newsletter distribution, with 51% of marketers circulating thought leadership on the platform. That’s a trend worth considering if engagement is the goal.
Common Mistakes That Kill Newsletter Engagement
Even experienced marketers can stumble over avoidable hurdles. That’s because they’re not glaring mistakes, but leaky oversights that often arise after you’re in the flow. Here are the biggest offenders, why they hurt and what to do instead.
- Ignoring the data: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Track what your readers are actually engaging with — not just what you think they like — and double down on what works. Automation and data dashboards are your best friends.
- Skipping the CTA: Without a CTA, your audience and message have no direction. Every newsletter should have one clear “next step” — whether that’s reading a related piece, signing up for an event or sending a reply.
- Not optimizing for mobile (and every other device): Most people read newsletters on their phones, so optimizing for desktop only is basically obsolete. Test your design across devices before distribution and keep it light.
- Overloading with content: More doesn’t equal value. Share one or two solid insights, queue up curated content for further exploration and move out of the way.
- Irregular distribution schedule: People build your newsletter into their habits, and those habits rely on timing. Life will get busy, so prepare for that by scheduling ahead or lining up lighter editions.
A final note on AI: Brafton’s own Head of Email, Bianca Baker, isn’t averse to brands using AI for email newsletter engagement. The right tools can simplify tasks like ideation, subject line variants and performance analysis, but Bianca emphasizes the importance of combining them with actual data and using human oversight at every step. There are aspects of your audience that AI can’t nail, and it’s not hard to sense the disconnect.
Transform Your Newsletter From Inbox Filler to Thriller
A solid, engaging newsletter is the product of experimentation, consistency and a clear sense of audience. That means tracking engagement, trimming the fat and never underestimating how quickly reader expectations evolve.
So, use these insights to give your newsletter the glow-up it deserves. Revisit your segments, sharpen your language, rethink your CTAs and let data guide the next phase of your growth. When you build a newsletter people want to open, you’ve won the inbox battle before it even begins.
