Engagement describes subscriber activity with email.
Mailbox providers use a combination of positive and negative engagement metrics in addition to other metrics when deciding if email is legitimate or spam:
- Positive engagement occurs when a subscriber reads an email, replies to an email, clicks a link, or rescues an email from the spam folder.
- Negative engagement occurs when a subscriber deletes an email without reading it or marks the email as spam.
Generally, the more positive engagement measured by a mailbox provider for a specific campaign, IP address, and domain, the more likely that email will be placed in the inbox.
Microsoft, AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo! lead the industry in their use of engagement metrics to determine filtering. Some measures are more sophisticated than others, but all mailbox providers evaluate subscriber engagement to make inbox placement decisions.
