Hooked Score
The Hooked Score is a good way to measure the extent of engagement. While it can apply to all actions done by a customer, we will keep the focus on email. We will keep the time period as the previous 30 days. There are two actions that can be measured with email: opens and clicks. A click is more valuable than an email. So, we can define Hooked Score as total opens + (total clicks * 3). Thus, if an email recipient does 5 opens and 1 click in the previous 30 days, the Hooked Score will be 5 + (1 * 3) = 8. For inactive customers, the Hooked Score will be 0.
Opens and clicks may not be the ideal metric to measure engagement, but they are a good start. They are easy to measure. (There can be a problem for customers using Apple devices because Apple caches emails and thus the Open may be inaccurate. For now, in India, this is a small percentage of users, so we can still use it. Over time, clicks and in-mail engagement for AMP emails will need to be the metrics to be measured.)
This gives marketers a good starting point to track and improve email engagement. First, measure Hooked Score for all email subscribers. Also calculate aggregate, average, and median scores. This can also be done for the past 6 months to get a trendline of change. As a side project, Hooked Scores can also be correlated with CLV (customer lifetime value) for each customer. Second, a goal can now be set for the email engagement team. Let us say the target is to double the aggregate Hooked Score over a year, which means it needs to grow 6% monthly. The email engagement team can then make its own tasks: they could focus on reactivation of the inactive base (those with Hooked Score of 0) or do a branding series with existing customers to drive greater engagement. As another side project, the team can track changes in Hooked Score with NRR (Net Revenue Retention).
While sending more marketing mails is one approach to increasing Hooked Scores, a better way is via Email2. The combination of AMP, Ems and Microns as a composite to create emails which are interactive, informative and incentivised should lead to a much bigger and lasting impact because this prioritises the upstream (attention, engagement and habits) rather than a short-term push for transactions. By competing and winning the battle for time (mental availability), brands put themselves in position to win the battle for money (repeated transactions).
Execution of the Email2 initiative can be done via the brand’s internal teams or the Progency. Making it happen will need some rebudgeting – brands will need to set aside one rupee per customer per month. This should pay for itself with higher retention, lower churn, and thus lower spends on reacquisition via Google and Facebook.
