Engagement Score
An engagement score is a composite metric that combines multiple signals (opens, clicks, replies, forwards) to measure how actively a subscriber interacts with your emails.
What Is Engagement Score?
Rather than looking at individual metrics in isolation, engagement scoring creates a single number that represents a subscriber's overall activity level. A typical engagement scoring model might assign points for different actions: 1 point for an open, 3 points for a click, 5 points for a reply, and 10 points for a forward or share. Points can decay over time so that recent activity is weighted more heavily. Subscribers are then segmented into tiers — highly engaged, moderately engaged, at-risk, and dormant. This tiered view makes it much easier to target the right content and re-engagement strategies to each group.
Why It Matters for Newsletters
Engagement scoring transforms your subscriber list from a simple count into a meaningful picture of list health. It identifies your most valuable subscribers (for premium content or sponsorship targeting), flags at-risk subscribers before they unsubscribe, and helps you prioritise re-engagement efforts where they'll have the most impact.
Best Practices
- Define a scoring model that reflects the actions most valuable to your newsletter
- Apply time decay so that recent engagement counts more than past activity
- Segment subscribers into engagement tiers for targeted communication
- Review and adjust your scoring model quarterly based on actual behaviour patterns
- Use engagement scores to clean your list — suppress chronically dormant subscribers
How Aldus Handles This
Aldus tracks engagement automatically and uses engagement signals to power its re-engagement campaigns. The platform identifies at-risk subscribers and can send personalised win-back messages using AI before they churn.