Understanding the Engagement System
The engagement system is the set of tools Tarvent uses to work out who actually wants your email, and to help you act on that. This article is the map: what the pieces are, where each one lives, and which article explains it.
What you'll learn
- What the engagement system is made of, from a single contact up to a whole audience.
- Where to find each part in Tarvent.
- How the pieces feed into each other.
- Which article to read for the question you actually have.
What we'll cover
- What the engagement system is
- The four parts
- How the pieces fit together
- Why it protects your deliverability
- Where to start, by what you want to do
1 What the engagement system is
Every email you send produces evidence: opened, clicked, replied, ignored, bounced, reported. On its own that evidence is just a pile of events. The engagement system turns it into three things you can use:
- A judgement about each contact — how interested they are, and whether you should keep emailing them.
- A picture of your audience as a whole — whether it is getting healthier or quietly decaying.
- Ready-made ways to act — filters that pick the right contacts for a campaign without you writing rules.
It runs automatically. There is nothing to switch on, and no rules to configure. Behaviour from both campaign emails and journey emails counts.
2 The four parts
1. Contact scoring
Each contact gets an engagement score from 0 to 100, an engagement level (Hot, Warm, Cold, Inactive), a lifecycle stage (New, Active, At-Risk, Dormant, Lost, Reactivated, Never Engaged) and a send recommendation.
Where: on any contact's record, and as columns and filters throughout your audience.
Read: Understanding contact engagement scoring for what the levels and stages mean and how to use them, or Engagement scoring: the full calculation for exactly how the number is worked out.
2. Audience reporting
The same data rolled up, so you can see the shape of your whole list rather than one person at a time: how engagement is distributed, which direction it is moving, and what your campaigns are doing to it.
Where: Audience → Reports.
Read: Audience reports for the overview, then Engagement analytics, Growth and health, Campaign impact, Audience report card and Executive summary.
3. Smart filters
Pre-built targeting that turns the scoring into a selection: the engaged, the drifting, the never-engaged, the ones to leave alone. You pick the goal and the rules are applied for you.
Where: in the targeting options when you build a campaign or a segment.
Read: Smart filters.
4. The dashboard widget
A standing summary of how your audience's engagement is distributed and which way it is trending, so a change is visible without going looking for it.
Where: your dashboard. Add it from Manage dashboard if it is not already there.
3 How the pieces fit together
Each part feeds the next:
- Behaviour — a contact opens, clicks, replies, or does nothing.
- Contact scoring — that behaviour becomes a score, a level and a lifecycle stage, recalculated daily.
- Audience reporting — every contact's score rolls up into the picture of your list.
- Smart filters — the scores become a selection you can send to.
- Your next campaign — goes to better-chosen people, which produces better behaviour, which feeds back to step 1.
The loop is the point. Targeting engaged contacts produces more engagement, which raises scores, which makes the next selection better. Sending everything to everyone runs the loop backwards.
Pro tip: Contact-level scores and audience-level reports can disagree for a day. Scores recalculate daily, so a campaign you sent this morning will not be reflected until the next run. If a number looks stale straight after a send, that is why.
4 Why it protects your deliverability
Mailbox providers decide where your email lands based on how recipients react to it. Repeatedly emailing people who never open produces exactly the signals that push you into spam folders: no engagement, rising complaints, more bounces as old addresses decay.
Engagement scoring is the practical defence. Excluding contacts who have never engaged, and easing off the ones who have drifted, keeps your sending concentrated on people who want it — which is what providers reward.
This is the same evidence behind your sender reputation. See Sender reputation by sending domain for how it is scored, and Why your account has temporary sending limits for what happens when it slips too far.
5 Where to start, by what you want to do
| What you want | Start here |
|---|---|
| Understand what Hot, Cold or At-Risk mean, and what to do about them | Understanding contact engagement scoring |
| Know exactly how a score is calculated, and why a contact's is what it is | Engagement scoring: the full calculation |
| Target a campaign at the right people without building rules | Smart filters |
| See whether your audience is getting healthier or worse | Growth and health |
| Find out what a campaign did to your audience | Campaign impact |
| Work out why your email is landing in spam | Sender reputation by sending domain |