Shut up about engagement rate, already.

Or, why list size and fan counts still matter.

When you work in digital marketing, or politics, you have to get used to people who don’t know much about what you do getting caught up with buzzwords.

Remember, “Soccer moms”? Or, “No one uses email any more — it’s all about social,”?

Yeah. If your marketing team tells you that engagement is more important than email list size or social network fans, you should think seriously about firing them.

Why? Well, your bottom line depends on converting your digital marketing into sales/votes/signups. Maybe not directly, if you’re a brand marketer, but even then, sales is the ultimate goal.

And you don’t get scale with just engagement — it’s a function of getting a decent conversion rate on the lists you have (or audience you can reach with your social network properties, or ads). And, since it’s a function, both size and engagement matter.

More importantly, one can compensate for the other.

The equation above describes how your marketing makes you money. Let C = conversions; Cr = conversion rate; Rr = Read rate (or, engagement); and L = list.

Again, if you have low engagement, you can make up for it by reaching more people. If you have a small active list, you may drive more sales than someone with a terribly disengaged — but sizable—list.

Ultimately, the whole chain is important, and a competent marketing team is going to bust their ass to maximize the audience (within reason) AND increase the levels of engagement.

If they’re only focused on one, they’re idiots.

I’d love to you hear your thoughts. You can find me tweeting about online politics, whisky, and cephalopods at @SteveOlson — and if you liked this post, I’d appreciate you clicking the “recommend” button below. Thanks!