Here are five tips to help you increase your email’s click-through rates:
1. Make sure your emails are opened
This sounds obvious, right? However, it is not as easy as it seems. Just because your email is delivered to your recipient’s inbox doesn’t mean the recipient will open your email. Here are several ways to increase the chance of email opening:
- Increasing your open rates starts with gathering relevant opt-ins. What is someone signing up for? Make it obvious from the start. What kind of information can he expect? How many times will he receive your emails? You might scare off some opt-ins this way, but that’s no loss. Think “quality” over “quantity”.
- Identify yourself. Make it perfectly clear for the recipient who you are. Use your name, your company name or both. Otherwise, you will be considered as a spammer.
- Create an interesting (but short) subject. A well-written subject line invites the recipient to open the mail. Be sure to stick to a maximum of 50 characters (20 if you have a lot of mobile readers) to prevent it from being cut off in most email clients.
- Compose a strong snippet or pre-header. This is the first text that’s displayed underneath or next to the subject line. Often the snippet contains text like “Unable to read this mail? Open the web version.” You should do better than that.
2. Use only one clear call to action
“Subsribe to our newsletter now!”. “Buy this product!”. Having multiple calls to action (CTAs) only makes it confusing for your recipients. Determine what the main goal of your email is, and make sure your call to action serves that goal, and that goal only.
Also, a CTA should make clear for the readers:
- What is expected of them
- Where the CTA will take them
- Why they has to go there
The best CTAs answer those three questions, using as few words as possible:
- Contact us.
- Apply now.
- Sign up now.
- Create an account.
And so on…
Avoid CTAs that state the obvious. The internet has been around long enough even for the biggest technophobes to understand that they have to click on a hyperlink to make it work. In other words, never use “click here.”
3. Create mobile-proof emails
Not preparing your emails for mobile is a mistake you can’t allow yourself to make. Create your email templates using responsive design, which will adjust the email to, for example, screen size used or the orientation of your screen (in the case of smart phones, which you can hold horizontally or vertically). Also, keep in mind that mobile users click using their fingers instead of a mouse. Make sure all your calls to action are large enough and your hyperlinks have enough space between them. Tip: a finger takes up, on average, about 44×44 pixels on a mobile screen.
4. Be relevant
Your database is one of the most powerful assets you have to increase the number of clicks in your emails. Using the information in your database, you can send your recipients relevant emails that fit their needs. The most efficient form of email relevancy based on the data in your database is event-driven email marketing. For example, you send emails based on someone’s interests, products someone purchases or didn’t purchase. Abandoned shopping carts, for example, are known to increase click-through rates 20%.
5. Test and measure
Not every target group is the same. That’s why you should use the previous four tips merely to get started. From there, the best way to improve your open rate is by testing various strategies and to keep measuring the results. Test emails with split-run and A/B tests, including different send times and different subject lines. Keep experimenting until you find the right format and the click-through rate you’re aiming for.