Engagement Rate

The metrics update reflects the change in how email is presented - we now deliver the “full” content in the user’s email, without requiring them to click to see it. As a result, engagement is now calculated as unique engaged users divided by reached users (users with an impression). This new calculation also affects engagement in the member experience (both web and mobile). Let’s look at some visuals.

Please refer to the Metrics Update 2023 article for more details.

Email

As opposed to Classic Studio, emails are a much more immediate experience in Creator Studio. The moment someone opens an email, they see the full content. Our metrics here are collapsed -  open and impression (a preview of the full content) happen simultaneously.

Here is a visual:

For email, we want to know - of the folks that previewed the email, how many engaged with it? If the email does not contain any embedded content, you can expect the engagement rate to be 0%. However, if you were to add an email link to open the content in the web experience (or web lite for email-only communities), clicking on that link would count as an open for the email and a click for the content rendered in the web view. If you enabled Acknowledge for the campaign, clicking this link would take you to the full view of the campaign where the user could acknowledge the content. An acknowledge engagement would then be counted for that action. Note that clicked rich text links, such as 'post' in the example above,  do not count toward engagement.

Newsletter

To build on our basic email example, what if you create a campaign that has links to other content? How do we count views and engagement in this case?

First, let's establish the notion of parent and embedded content. When you click Create, you are editing the "parent" campaign, and when you add a link block and link to existing content, you are creating "embedded" content. The parent campaign may have images, text, or nearly nothing at all - but it is the container within which you have the embedded content.

Once a campaign with embedded content (such as a newsletter) is delivered to your community as an email, opening the email counts as both an open and an impression for the parent content, as well as an impression for each piece of embedded content.

Within the parent, the user sees a preview of the embedded content. Therefore, we only get an impression of the embedded content until the user clicks to open the embedded content to see the full version of the embedded content.

Here is a visual:

Newsletter in the Member Experience

How about in the member experience? The main difference is what we consider an impression for the parent content. Just like clicking or tapping on an email in your inbox counts as an open for the parent content, so does clicking or tapping on a content card in the member experience. For email, this also counts as an open for the parent content. But for the member experience, we have to take the feed view into account. So, in the member experience, when a content card is visible in the view panel in the feed, that counts as an impression for the parent content. And just like when an email is opened, opening a content card also counts as an impression for each piece of embedded content. The physical action of clicking or tapping on an embedded piece of content counts as a click for the parent content and an open for the embedded content.

Here is a visual:

Where to See the New Engagement Rate

In any report where the engagement rate is calculated, such as Campaign Performance, this new way of measuring engagement (unique engaged users divided by reached users (users with an impression)will appear.

Note: Campaigns created in Classic Studio will continue to rely on the clicks divided by views calculation.

Will This Change Engagement Rate Numbers?

The change we have outlined above should not change numbers dramatically. The engagement rate was always about whether users clicked to see the full view of the content - and the only change we've made is that it only takes one click to see the full view of the content.

Note: If email campaigns created in Creator Studio still calculated engagement rate as "clicked to see the full view of the content" divided by "opened email to view the campaign", then the engagement rate would actually drop dramatically. As we load the full view of the content with the first click, there is no need to find the small hyperlink at the top of the campaign to open the content in the member experience.

However, this is a new calculation for us. If you see any potential issues with the numbers in your reports, please let the Support team know.