What is an engagement rate?
Discover the Future of Commerce Media Download Report Now ×

Get Fluent in Performance Marketing

Plain language explainers to help you keep up with the evolving digital landscape.

Engagement Rate

What is an engagement rate?

Engagement metric is a metric that measures how much users interact with a piece of content or an ad. Engagement rate is calculated by dividing the number of engagements by the number of impressions.

How do engagement rates work?

Engagement Rate shows advertisers how well their content and ads are resonating with their audience by answering the question: were users drawn into a message enough to demonstrate some level of interaction? Or was the message merely viewed as the user moved on to another site or piece of content?

Types of engagement rates:

  • Organic engagement rate: This type of engagement rate measures the number of engagements that a piece of content receives without any paid promotion.
  • Paid engagement rate: This type of engagement rate measures the number of engagements that a piece of content receives from paid promotion, such as social media advertising or email marketing.

How to measure engagement rate:

Engagement rate can be measured for a variety of content types, including social media posts, blog posts, email newsletters, and ads. The specific formula for calculating engagement rate will vary depending on the content type, but it generally involves dividing the number of engagements by the number of impressions.

Here are some examples of how to calculate engagement rate for different types of content:

  • Social media posts: Engagement rate for social media posts is calculated by dividing the number of likes, comments, and shares by the number of impressions.
  • Blog posts: Engagement rate for blog posts is calculated by dividing the number of page views, comments, and social shares by the number of page views.
  • Email newsletters: Engagement rate for email newsletters is calculated by dividing the number of opens, clicks, and forwards by the number of emails sent.
  • Ads: Engagement rate for ads is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions.

Why are engagement rates important to marketers?

Marketers value engagement rates because they let them gauge content and ad effectiveness, pinpoint audience preferences, and enhance campaign performance.

Who needs to know what engagement rates are:

  • Digital marketing manager
  • Paid search specialist
  • Social media marketer
  • Content marketing manager
  • Affiliate manager
  • Product manager
  • Marketing analyst
  • Brand manager

Use engagement rate in a sentence: “As ‘ad avoidance’ gets easier and the signal loss on consumer insights proliferates due to privacy restrictions, the Engagement Rate is king because it shows that customers do want to interact with messages that inform and inspire them.”

[close]