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How to Write Engaging Emails That Increase Clicks (2026 Playbook)
Everything You Need To Know To Build an Engaging Email
Nicola Vaughan
January 11th, 2025
Most emails fail because they’re forgettable.
You don’t need 50 tactics. You need leverage.
Engaging emails do three things well:
They feel personal
They feel valuable
They feel easy to act on
Building an email template for your audience is one thing. Building one people actually want to read is another.
As Austin Rief, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew, put it in The beehiiv State of Newsletters 2026:
“What holds true today is that really great content still matters most. Growth hacks may work for a while, but creating high-quality content is what lasts. And newsletters remain one of the best ways to build a direct relationship with your audience, no matter what your goals are.”
That’s the real challenge.
An engaging email builds trust. If your emails aren’t engaging, you’ll lose subscribers.
In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how to build emails people open, read, and act on: from understanding your audience and personalization to design, CTAs, usability, and performance optimization.
Table of Contents
Understand Your Audience
The first step in making your email engaging is to fully understand your audience.
You need to know who they are and what their interests/preferences are in order to be able to show them what they find engaging.
It’s also important to understand your subscribers’ pain points so that you know what not to send them!
Start With Relevance (Segment Like It’s 2026)
Most emails don’t fail because they lack personality.
They fail because they’re irrelevant.
Before you think about subject lines or colors, ask:
What problem is this email solving?
What stage is this subscriber in?
What action do I want them to take?
In 2026, behavior-based segmentation outperforms demographic segmentation.
Instead of segmenting by age or gender, segment by:
Click behavior
Purchase history
Engagement frequency
Topic interest
That’s what makes an email feel personal.
Personalization isn’t “Hi {first_name}.”
It’s sending different emails to different intent.
Use these five personalization levers:
Interest (what they click)
Stage (new vs active vs drifting)
Behavior (what they did last)
Context (location/time/device)
Offer fit (next logical step)
Rule: personalize the message, not the greeting.
The Engagement Stack
Every high-performing email has five layers:
1. Subject Line → Gets the open
2. First 2 Lines → Keeps attention
3. Formatting → Makes it scannable
4. Offer → Creates value
5. CTA → Drives action
If engagement is low, one of these layers is weak.
Example diagnostic:
Low open rate → Fix subject line.
High open, low click → Offer isn’t compelling.
High click, low conversion → Landing page friction.
Content Relevance and Value
Write emails people click. Content engages when it does one of three things:
Solves a problem
Teaches something useful
Creates emotional resonance
High-performing formats in 2026:
Quick-win playbooks
Before/after case studies
Tactical breakdowns
Curated resources
Interactive polls
Interactive content works because it lowers friction. Instead of asking readers to click away, you let them engage inside the email.
That increases dwell time and click-through rate. If your email doesn’t solve, teach, or resonate— it won’t convert.
Personalized Content
Make sure your content is personalized to show that you care about your audience.
A simple way to personalize content is by addressing your subscriber by their first name in either the subject line or in the body of your email. This adds a personal touch and suggests that you’re speaking directly to your subscriber rather than sending out a blanket email.
Personalized emails have an impressive average open rate of 29% and an average Click Through Rate (CTR) of 41% (Mailmodo). This is because they make subscribers feel valued and understood and that they’re not just a number in a mailing list.
Educational and Entertaining Content
Content that is educational and entertaining is more likely to keep your audience engaged.
You could help your audience understand more about your industry or provide them with content that is funny and interactive.
Whatever content you choose to produce, make sure that it teaches your audience something in a digestible way or makes them smile.
Content That Drives Action
Content engages when it does one of three things:
Solves a problem
Teaches something useful
Creates emotional resonance
High-performing email formats in 2026:
Quick-win playbooks
Before/after case studies
Short tactical breakdowns
Curated resources
Interactive polls
Interactive content performs well because it lowers friction.
Instead of asking readers to click away, you let them engage inside the email.
That increases dwell time and click-through rate.
Design and Usability
While content may seem like the most important step in an engaging email, design and usability also play a very important part.
If your email isn’t well designed and has issues with responsiveness, it’s unlikely that your subscribers will stay engaged for long - even if the content is first-class.
Mobile Responsiveness
With 55% of emails being opened on mobile devices, there’s no space for emails that aren’t mobile responsive (eMarketer).
If a template isn’t responsive on small screens, your email won’t display correctly, which will cause your engagement rates to take a nose-dive.
Make sure that your email template is fully mobile responsive by testing it on multiple screen sizes/devices.
Creating a mobile-responsive email can increase CTR by 15% (MailChimp), which is not surprising considering that CTAs are often affected when a template isn’t mobile-responsive.
Below are some tips on mobile-friendly design to get you started over on the beehiiv blog.
Visual Appeal
Your email template should also be visually appealing to keep your audience engaged. You may have the best piece of content in the world; but if it’s presented badly, people aren’t likely to spend time reading it.
Ensure that your color palette looks great and doesn’t clash with other elements such as font colors/typefaces and play with different types of content such as images and videos to add extra visual appeal to your emails.
Call to Action (CTA)
Your email template should feature prominent CTAs throughout. This will keep your subscribers engaged with your brand as a whole, leading them to other areas such as your website or social media channels.
Clear and Compelling CTAs
Make the CTA Unavoidable One email = one primary action.
High-performing CTA patterns:
Outcome CTA → “Get the 7-step checklist”
Time CTA → “Steal the 2-minute script”
Curiosity CTA → “See the teardown”
Commitment CTA → “Reply with ‘YES’ and I’ll send it”
If your CTA feels optional, it will be ignored. Strong verbs beat vague language.
“Buy.”
“Book.”
“Download.”
“Start.”
Testing and Analytics
Learning about how your emails perform can guide you in increasing engagement rates.
Testing your emails and analyzing your analytics can tell you a whole number of things about how your audience perceives your content.
Knowing what’s going right and what you need to improve will give you the tools you need to drive up those engagement rates and keep your subscribers happy.
A/B Testing
A/B Testing can be highly successful in determining what content is more engaging for your users. This involves showing subscribers two versions of the same email with small changes, such as a different subject line, for example.
By analyzing the results from these tests, you can track which subject line provided the better open rate and, ultimately, use that subject line moving forward to improve engagement.
Analytics and Feedback
Analyzing the results from your emails and requesting feedback from your audience can help you understand what you’re doing right and how you can improve.
It may be a scary thought to find out what you’re doing wrong, but ignorance isn’t bliss when it comes to email marketing.
If there’s something making your emails unengaging, you need to know about it, so you can make improvements.
Check out the analytics of your emails to understand open rates, CTRs, and conversion rates to understand your engagement levels.
You could also send out polls to your subscribers, asking what they like about your emails and what they would find more engaging.
Why Listen to Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 10 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content for beehiiv to help people nail their email strategies!
Ways To Build Engaging Emails
Now that you understand the basics, let’s take a deeper dive into content creation, design, personalization, and optimization to really understand how to build an engaging email.
Content Creation
We know that content is king, and your emails will never be engaging unless your content is tip top.
Let’s look at the different types of content and how they can impact engagement levels.
User-Generated Content
User-generated content is original, real content produced by users in relation to a brand, usually on social media or forums.
This content is super valuable, as it’s raw, authentic, and repurposable and usually takes the form of images, videos, product reviews, or podcasts.
Brands love user-generated content because it markets their products/services in a way that they cannot achieve.
For example, if someone posted a review of a product on social media, this content would be far more valuable than the brand posting how great the product is.
People are more likely to trust the opinions of other users than the brand itself, which is why user-generated content is so important.
Storytelling
Mastering the art of storytelling can put the content of your emails into a different league.
Storytelling involves drawing in a reader with creative language to make people think and evoke emotion. This can encourage them to feel connected to a brand/product and increase engagement levels.
Make sure that you’re imaginative, building a narrative around encouraging your subscribers to use their imagination. This will help you to connect with your audience by telling a story within your email that keeps them engaged for longer.
Here are some ideas on storytelling to help you drive engagement!
Educational Content
Giving your audience educational content can be highly engaging, as they’re receiving something useful in return for signing up for your mailing list.
Educational content could be anything from useful resources such as e-books or downloadable content to how-to guides or recipes. Whatever it is, make sure it’s engaging, interactive, and useful to your audience to keep people interested.
Exclusive Content
Exclusive content is content that is accessible by select people. This content may be offered in return for subscribing to a premium mailing list or as an incentive for users sharing content with other users.
The main advantage of exclusive content is that it can make your audience feel valued and important, as they’re receiving content that isn’t available to everyone.
Exclusive content tends to produce higher engagement rates, as the users receiving these emails are more in tune with your brand.
Interactive Content
Encourage your subscribers to engage with you with interactive content. This type of content is designed to prompt users to interact with your brand, while also keeping your emails fresh and exciting.
Examples of interactive content include the following:
Polls
Surveys
Quizzes
Games
Tools
Interactive content can generate engagement levels that are 52.6% higher than static content, with users dedicating more time, on average, to interactive content than static content such as images or text (Linearity).
Design
The design of your email template can play a huge part in engagement levels. If an email isn’t visually appealing or is badly designed, you can guarantee that people will be less likely to interact with it.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Top of the list when it comes to email design is mobile-responsiveness. If your email isn’t mobile-friendly, it may not display correctly on all screen sizes, leading to missed opportunities for engagement.
Test your email on a range of screen sizes to ensure that your email template scales down correctly, and all elements work as they should.
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is what guides the arrangement of elements in the design to present them in a visually appealing way. This involves paying close attention to colors, size, and alignment to lay out content in an effective way.
For example, good visual hierarchy will ensure that the main message of an email is prominent with large text. It would also ensure that content is easy to read by using colors/fonts that are pleasant for users to read.
High-Quality Images
While it may sound obvious that an email’s images should be high quality, users can be turned off quickly if an image looks sub-par.
Low-quality images can look unprofessional and reflect badly on your brand. This is particularly apparent if the images you’re using depict your products or services.
High quality JPEGs are best when using images in email, generally allowing you to show a high-resolution image without a huge file size.
Consistent Branding
Consistent branding is super important for driving engagement. Users will be more drawn to your brand if you stick to the same visual style and messaging, as this creates a stronger brand identity.
It can also look unprofessional if your branding isn’t consistent. This can lead to unclear messaging that confuses users about what you’re trying to achieve.
Make sure that all logos, typefaces, and colors are consistent across your marketing material to drive and protect engagement.
Whitespace
Whitespace refers to the empty areas between the elements of your email.
While you want to include lots of engaging content in your templates, too much content can be overwhelming to your subscribers, making them unlikely to engage.
Don’t overlook the use of whitespace in your emails.
When used correctly, whitespace can improve the readability and visual appeal of your templates, making them easier to digest and increasing conversion/engagement rates.
Personalization
Personalizing your emails is a highly effective way of increasing engagement levels.
Let’s take a look at some different ways of using personalization to keep your audience interested.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is digital content that changes based on user behavior, interests, or preferences.
By showing a user content specific to them, you’re likely to achieve a higher engagement level and, ultimately, a better conversion rate, too.
For example, you could use dynamic content to offer product recommendations to users who have bought similar items. This will drive engagement and encourage users to potentially buy more products from you.
Behavioral Triggers
Similar to dynamic content, behavioral triggers allow you to set up workflows that adhere to set actions when users show a specific behavior.
A common way of using behavioral triggers is to send users who have abandoned their shopping baskets an email prompting them to check out. This is often accompanied by a discount code for said items to give them an incentive to convert.
Behavioral triggers can be highly effective for increased engagement, communicating with users who are already interested in your brand but may just need an extra push to engage.
Segmentation
Segmenting your mailing lists is highly successful in improving engagement rates. This involves separating data into categories to serve users with content most relevant to them, helping to boost engagement/conversion rates.
For example, you could segment data by location and show location-specific content to users for a more personalized approach. This would work well if you were a franchise with various stores and would help you link your subscribers with their nearest franchise and improve engagement levels.
Personalized Subject Lines
A personalized subject line is highly effective in improving open rates, which can lead to better engagement rates for your emails.
One of the best ways to do this is to include a subscriber’s first name in the subject line of your email. This has been shown to increase open rates by up to 28% (NotifyVisitors), as it naturally will grab your subscriber’s attention when they’re looking at their inbox and provide a personal touch that other emails may be lacking.
Optimization
Analyzing your emails and optimizing them can help you better understand the performance of your emails and how you can work on engagement levels.
From A/B testing to automated workflows, there are many ways to optimize your email marketing strategy to keep your audience engaged for longer.
If results are weak, here’s what to fix:
Low opens → Subject line + promise clarity
High opens, low clicks → Offer mismatch
High clicks, low conversion → Landing page friction
High unsubscribes → Too frequent or low value
Low replies → Not enough opinion or personality
One habit that compounds:
Keep a swipe file of your top 10 emails by CTR. Rewrite future emails using those structures. Optimization beats inspiration.
Email Analytics
Focusing on your email analytics is vital if you’re trying to build an engaging email. If you don’t know how your campaigns are performing, it’s unlikely that you’ll know if your subscribers are engaged or not.
Some key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should regularly track include:
Delivery rate: the percentage of emails that are being delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes
Open rate: the percentage of emails that are opened by your subscribers
Spam rate: the number of emails that are marked as spam by subscribers
CTR: the percentage of users who click on one or more links within your email
Bounce rate: the percentage of emails sent that fail to deliver to a subscriber’s inbox
Unsubscribe rate: the percentage of users that opt out of a mailing list after receiving an email
Send Time Optimization
Send time optimization is where brands send out emails at specific times based on when users are most likely to interact. This can be great for engagement levels, showing recipients content at a time when they’re more likely to have time to engage.
For example, if you’ve sent a subscriber a time-limited coupon, you could use send time optimization to trigger an email the day before the coupon expires.
This email would encourage them to use their coupon before it expires, helping to improve engagement rates and conversion rates.
Re-Engagement Campaigns
A re-engagement campaign is where you target users that you’ve already engaged with and who are interested in your brand to re-introduce them to your products or encourage them to complete an action.
A “e miss you” email can be successful in re-engaging subscribers who haven’t opened one of your emails in a while. You could give them an incentive to peak their interest again in your brand, such as an exclusive offer or discount code.
For more tips on re-engagement campaigns, take a look at the beehiiv blog.
Automated Workflows
Optimizing your email campaigns with automated workflows can be highly effective in increasing engagement levels.
While many brands use automated workflows to streamline their processes and save time, a key benefit of this is ensuring that all interested subscribers are targeted with specific actions, rather than being missed by human error or oversight.
An example of an automated workflow is sending out a welcome series of emails to all new subscribers, hitting them with a friendly first impression as soon as they show interest in your brand.
Making this process automated ensures that it definitely happens for all new subscribers, engaging them when they’re most likely to be interested in hearing from you.
Final Thoughts
Email engagement is a complex and multi-faceted topic, but we hope that this guide has you brimming with ideas to take your email engagement to the next level.
In summary:
Keep your content fresh and exciting with different types of content such as exclusive, interactive, and educational content.
Make sure that your emails are mobile-friendly, consistent in branding, and make good use of whitespace for a super engaging design.
Use personalization to provide a human touch to your email templates, driving engagement by helping subscribers feel valued and listened to.
Analyze your results to determine the best times to send your emails, important KPIs such as open-rate and CTR, and potential opportunities for automated workflows.
If you’re keen to get started with your next email campaign, sign up for a free trial with beehiiv. We specialize in helping you build successful email campaigns that focus on growth, engagement, measurability, and monetization.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the fastest way to improve email engagement?
Fix the first two lines of your email.
Your subject line earns the open.
Your first two lines decide whether someone keeps reading. Start with one of these:
A sharp promise
A strong opinion
A surprising insight
A specific outcome
Then reduce your email to one primary CTA. Multiple competing actions dilute clicks.
How do I increase clicks without sounding salesy?
Shift from what you want to what they get.
Weak CTA: “Learn more about our solution.”
Stronger CTA: “See the 5-step template that increased replies by 32%.”
Focus on:
Outcome
Specificity
Time savings
Clear next step
If your CTA feels like a favor to you, it won’t convert.
If it feels like a shortcut for them, it will.
How many links should an email have?
One primary link.
Too many links create decision fatigue.
If your goal is conversion:
1 main CTA
Optional secondary links only if they support the same outcome
If your goal is newsletter-style content (media format), you can include multiple links — but still highlight one dominant action visually.
Clarity beats volume.
What metrics matter most for engagement?
Don’t obsess over vanity metrics.
Track:
Open Rate → Is your positioning strong?
Click-Through Rate (CTR) → Is your offer compelling?
Unsubscribe Rate → Are you creating fatigue?
Reply Rate → Are you building relationship?
Revenue per subscriber (if monetized) → Are you creating value?
If you want one engagement health metric to watch:
CTR + Replies combined tell you if people care.
How often should I send emails?
Consistency beats frequency.
If you can send:
Weekly → ideal for most creators
2–3x per week → strong for media brands
Daily → only if value density is high
The bigger risk isn’t sending too often. It’s sending inconsistently. Inconsistent cadence weakens attention.
Why are my emails getting opened but not clicked?
One of three reasons:
Your subject line overpromised.
Your offer lacks specificity.
Your CTA feels optional.
If open rate is strong but CTR is weak, the issue is almost always the offer — not the design.
Should I personalize every email?
Personalize with intent. Adding a first name helps.
But segmenting by:
Behavior
Interest
Purchase history
Engagement stage
…is what actually moves clicks. Relevance > personalization.
How long should an engaging email be?
As long as it needs to be — but no longer.
Short emails work when:
The action is simple
The offer is clear
The audience already trusts you
Long emails work when:
You’re selling transformation
You’re telling a story
You’re educating deeply
Length doesn’t determine engagement.
Clarity does.
What kills engagement fastest?
Three things:
Talking about yourself too much
Too many CTAs
No clear benefit
If your email reads like an announcement instead of a solution, engagement will drop.
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