Boost Your Next E-Mail’s Click-Through Rate with These 5 Tips

When you send out an email as part of your company’s email marketing strategy, you’ll have a few goals.

• Get it read by as many subscribers as possible
• Get clicks on your call-to-action
• Avoid unsubscribes

Read on for some considerations as part of your email marketing strategy that can boost your open rate, your click-through rate, and help you grow your list, too.

Segment Your Email Subscribers

Should every email you send go out to every single person on your list? Just like targeted advertisements boost conversion rates on paid ads, the same is true for email marketing. Many companies find that they have the best results with a sales funnel series for new customers, plus an ongoing newsletter that goes out to everyone on a schedule. Just like Amazon targets customers with emails that say “Based on your recent visit, we thought you might also be interested in…” you can do the same with your email marketing. How?

Dig into your analytics to determine the best way to segment after a newsletter or other email series goes out.  Examine results after every email to help you strategize and further segment based on those reports.

Of course, segmenting may not make sense at the beginning. Growing your company’s email subscriber list can take time. But, there are lots of ways to do it.

Preview and Test First

Consider your reader in the design and delivery of your emails. Realize that some read emails on smartphones, others on a computer. Some automatically see images. Some won’t.  Preview before sending to catch problems, test load time, and assess reader experience. People have a short attention span with promotional emails, so you want to make it fast and easy for them to skim, read, and click regardless of what device they read on.

Timing Matters with Email Marketing

Don’t risk becoming white noise by posting too often. It can be a delicate balance between posting too often and not posting enough to gain benefits from your email marketing approach. Analyzing your email marketing reports and following industry best practices will help you further define the best time of day, the best day of the week, and the best day of the month to send out emails. You might get better click-through rates by sending at 8:AM on a Tuesday than 4:45 PM on a Friday, for instance.

GRAB Attention and Keep It

Your subject line matters.  Get subscribers to open and click with time-limited offers, too.

After someone opens, you’ve probably only got a few sentences to hold their attention.  Put the most important information early on.

Consider what shows up above the fold (within the screen, before scrolling) to entice people to scroll and click.  Remember that the first few lines may show up in a preview window so if you don’t entice them to open that email within a few sentences, you may not get an ‘open. You could also get marked as spam, or many of your ‘opens’ could open just to unsubscribe, regardless of how great your subject line is.

Ensure your emails are skimmable. Add bold subheadings, images, and colored and labeled buttons that are placed early on to give a quick skimmer the gist of the message and entice them to have a closer look and /or to click.

Give More than One Call to Action

You want people to follow your primary CTA (call-to-action), of course, and many email marketing experts believe each email should have a primary CTA. But, depending on the purpose of the email, it may also be wise to provide more than one.

Multiple calls-to action can be useful in boosting your conversion rate and reach with longer sales cycles. Entice with potential offers, utilize a P.S. that has a link to a landing page, provide share buttons, etcetera.  Your primary desired call-to-action may be something you get better results with by highlighting with a colored button rather than just a link and doing so after the first paragraph could be a great way to up your click-through rate.

Tip: Direct people to an email marketing landing page that leverages good copywriting techniques.

Extra Tip: Optimize for SEO and Share It

Unless the emails are part of a strategic sales funnel, there’s a solid chance it’s advantageous to utilize that email as content. Social sharing buttons on your emails for readers and publishing on your social media accounts can bring you even more results.

Note: If sharing on social media, optimizing your email for SEO value is almost as important as is optimizing it for viewing experience so that any online shares can help get seen by more potential targeted subscribers. Integrate image tags, keywords, and links.

Boost Your Email Marketing Results

Are you sending emails out often enough? Does your approach need work? Learn more about how Thrive can help boost your list size and your conversion rates.