Predictive Engagement Targeting is Action Network's new tool powered by machine learning. It is only available for partners using Boost. You can learn more about Boost and how to sign up here.
- What is Predictive Engagement Targeting?
- When would I use it?
- Using Predictive Engagement Targeting to understand your list
- Quick Targeting
- How do I get access to Predictive Engagement Targeting?
What is Predictive Engagement Targeting?
This sophisticated model assigns a score from 0-100 predicting whether an activist is likely to open your email, based on data from your group and other groups opted in to the Data Co-Op. Our tool looks at previous behaviors across millions of Action Network email recipients to make assumptions about the likelihood of members on your list to perform a certain action (eg. open an email).
Personal information (like email address) is never shared between groups.
When would I use it?
Predictive Engagement Targeting is a great new resource to help maintain deliverability or rehabilitate your list. (Find our Deliverability Guide here.)
Say you've recently seen low open rates for your newsletters. You can target your next email to subscribers with high Predictive Open Scores. This means that the people who receive it are those most likely to engage with it. Targeting the top 60% of your list will send your email to about as many people who would have opened it if you’d send it to your entire list. This raises the open rate significantly - meaning providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or iCloud are less likely to flag you as spam - without having to cut your list down based on cruder engagement metrics, as is typical when repairing deliverability. So you don’t lose as much output (fundraising, petition signatures, etc…) even though your audience gets smaller.
Maybe you want to email supporters who haven’t taken action or engaged with your content in a while. Typically this is very risky – emailing non-engaged activists is a surefire way to tank your deliverability. You can pair Predictive Engagement Targeting with other recommendations from our Deliverability best practices, like sending an email with messaging designed for those people or an automated Re-Activation Series Ladder. Target your subscribers at risk of falling off as usual, but then use these new predictive settings to limit potential damage to your deliverability reputation by reaching out to those mostly likely to open a re-engagement message.
Using Predictive Engagement Targeting to understand your list
How do you pick a predictive engagement threshold to use for your targeting? Use our analysis feature!
When you first load the preview create page for an email draft, you may not see a count. Rather, you may see "[calculating...]" where the count should be. The preview page for your email will automatically refresh when initial targeting is finished, replacing "[calculating..."] with a number of activists that this email targets. Once that initial calculation has finished, a box will also appear allowing you to analyze your list’s predictive engagement scores.
Click the blue Analyze Targeting button to continue. It may take a moment for the Predictive Engagement Targeting to analyze your list. The page will refresh again when ready.
Here's how it works:
A graph appears, representing all activists targeted by your email, arranged by predicative email open score. Use it to get a sense of how scores are distributed. The area shaded in green represents the portion of your list targeted by the Predicted Engagement targeting settings selected on the sliders.
Each slider can help you in different situations. For example, targeting the top 60% or so will result in your email being sent to nearly all activists who would have opened the email if you had sent to everyone in your initial targeting, a big efficiency gain. Targeting a specific audience size will allow you to choose a certain number of activists from your whole list, ordered by most likely to engage, so you can limit things like reactivation to only a certain amount per day.
To refine targeting, drag the sliders to adjust the score threshold. You can target with the sliders from the top or bottom depending on your needs. Each slider targets in a slightly different way, but they’re all related. Changing one slider will automatically adjust the values for the others.
They are:
- Predictive Email Open Audience - Target a specific number of activists sorted by predictive email open score.
- Predictive Email Open Proportion - Target a specific percentage of activists sorted by predictive email open score.
- Predictive Email Open Score - Target the portion of your universe with a Predictive Email Open Score above or below your specified number (0 - 100). When you understand these scores for your list, you can target using this number directly. See Quick Targeting below.
Using the visual settings will help you better understand the Predictive Email Open Score distribution of subscribers to your Group the more you use it.
Once you're ready, click "Save & Apply" to apply your selected targeting. This will apply and recalculate targets to this specific email. You should see a confirmation message in the top right corner and a Predictive Email Open Score noted above the usual Schedule and Send Email buttons.
If you save your draft and return to the email before sending, the Predictive Email Open Score settings will be saved in the appropriate Engagement targeting field. See Quick Targeting below to learn more about targeting manually without using the settings sliders.
Quick Targeting
Once you have a better understanding of the Predictive Open scores for your subscriber list, you can use numerical targeting scores without needing to engage the Targeting Settings sliders. In the Engagement section of the targeting page for any email, click the plus sign next to Predictive Email Open Score and enter a target number to include or exclude.
You can also save and load queries using Predictive Email Open Score.
How do I get access to Predictive Engagement Targeting?
To use Predictive Engagement Targeting, you must be opted into the Data Co-Op. You can opt-in on the Settings page or by clicking the Learn More link below the Predictive Email Open Score field in the Engagement section of an email's targeting page.
Scores are refreshed for email addresses in your group nightly. New activists won’t receive a Predictive Open Score until the next day. If you just opted in, you will have to wait until the following day to target based on the scores for your subscribers.
Newly created groups without much email history will have less accurate scores when you first start using Predictive Engagement Targeting. Accuracy will improve as time goes by and our system is able to better estimate your activists’ behavior.
Data Co-Op features like Predictive Engagement Targeting are only available to paying partners who make a monthly recurring donation to support our toolset. Donation levels are based on the size of the list you want to upload and your monthly email volume. Contact us about a partnership to get access.