How to boost engagement on Substack

Lifecycle subscription management is a key component of deliverability success. And it is a relatively simple process. The broad strokes are:

1. Identify subscribers who are not engaging (not opening or clicking).
2. Make an attempt at re-activating them, via a winback (re-engagement) campaign.
3. Suppress those who remain unengaged.

Suppression of those unengaged addresses is what helps boost (improve) your sending reputation by boosting (improving) your engagement metrics. While they're not looking at engagement the same way you and platforms measure it (they don't care about tracking pixels), many mailbox providers look at engagement as a metric to help them understand whether or not mail is wanted, and whether or not it deserves placement in the inbox. Gmail, in particular, looks at higher engagement as a metric that contributes positively to your sending reputation. If people engage with your mail at better-than-average rates, your mail is more likely to be wanted, and is less likely to land in the spam folder.

That's the core, TL;DR answer to the question, why does mail go to the spam folder? The primary reason, the most likely reason, maybe even the only reason, if you've got everything technically configured correctly, and you aren't buying email lists, is: low subscriber interest, measured as low engagement.

If you're a Substack user, the next question you are now likely to ask is, how do you do this on Substack? I was wondering the same thing, and I wasn't sure how, because I'm not really a Substack power user. Thankfully, Pavel Ivanishchev wrote about this recently: Your Substack engagement rates need attention. How to identify inactive subscribers even with Substack's limited tools, and he covers exactly what you need to know, as a Substack newsletter publisher, when it comes to executing a proper engagement boosting strategy.

By the way, Pavel has his own deliverability focused Substack, called Inbox Wizard. I'm a subscriber, and I think you should become one, too! It is a great newsletter, full of actionable deliverability insight and you can subscribe here.