10 Highly Effective Strategies to Improve Email Click-Through Rates
High email open-rates are nice, but they’re not enough. Sure, it’s lovely that people read the messages you send to their inbox! But the ROI on your email marketing efforts will always be negligible if only a small fraction actually clicks on the all-important links inside.
Indeed, email click-through is the true metric of email marketing success. This is the action that sends people through to your landing pages, exposes would-be customers to your brand, and gives you the chance at converting leads into sales.
Unfortunately, though, the average click-to-open rate for emails in North America hovers at a paltry 15.7% nowadays. And you can bet your bottom dollar that many businesses have click-through rates far lower than that. Ready for the good news?
Improving your company’s click-through rate could be easier than you think. Want some expert suggestions on how to do it? Keep reading for 10 effective strategies that’ll deliver sure-fire email click-through improvements.
1. Include Videos in Your Emails
People love video content nowadays. We’re consuming more videos than ever before on the internet and our appetite for it only seems to be increasing.
For example, YouTube has over 2 billion users who watch around 1 billion hours of video footage on the platform every single day. Throw in the mass consumption of videos on social platforms (such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram) and it’s clear how well-loved this form of media has become.
The best part? You can harness the popularity of video content and use it to your advantage in all forthcoming campaigns. It’s simple: include a video in your email content and you could see your click-through rate spike overnight.
2. Don’t Forget the Call-to-Action
People operate online in a way that isn’t dissimilar to sheep. In other words, they need to be guided and funneled into position if they’re ever going to go where you want them to!
It’s your job, as an email marketer, to be the shepherd.
And that’s where the call-to-action (CTA) comes into play. As you know already, CTAs are a crucial component of any effective marketing endeavor. They tell someone in an explicit manner what you’d like them to do, which improves your chances of it happening.
Never forget to include one in your emails. Tell them to ‘click here’, ‘watch now’, ‘read this guide’, and so on. A short and simple CTA with a text link could be all that separates you from a drastic boost to your email marketing click-through rate.
3. Leverage Personalization
Personalized content doesn’t just make a difference to your open rates. It’s a crucial tool for getting clicks as well.
Remember, people aren’t interested in generic email blasts anymore! This technique might have worked 15 years ago. But in 2021, where everybody’s grown accustomed to (and tired of) spammy messages, they only want to receive messages that a) come from trusted sources, and b) contain relevant information.
At the very least, you should address every email to recipients on a first-name basis. From there, leverage your data to include recommendations and requests you know they’ll appreciate. In the same way that Amazon suggests products based on previous purchases, your emails should only contain content that’s applicable to the recipient.
4. Build Trust
The power of personalization comes down to two factors: usefulness and trust. After all, why would anybody click a link you send that has zero relevance to their needs, wants, or interests? Likewise, with so much concern over cybercrime (not to mention the prevalence of automatic email filters), people have to trust you before they’ll ever click through.
Keep both issues in mind in your email campaigns and work hard to build trust over time. You can do this in numerous ways, but it almost always starts by providing value. Through consistent attempts to entertain, educate, and support someone, you’ll slowly build rapport and develop the relationship; it’s natural for click-through rates to improve as that happens.
This isn’t a quick or short-term solution to your problem. It is, however, one of the most effective in the long run.
5. Keep Things Simple
Your email isn’t a blog post. This might sound obvious, but it’s a big mistake that some marketers make on a regular basis! They apply the same methodology to emails as they would articles- filling them with images, links, GIFs, quotes, etcetera.
It makes total sense in some ways. You want to grab (and sustain) the recipient’s attention, which blog posts are great at. And, to be fair, good email copy should bear resemblance to an article in terms of its easy-to-read nature.
Overall, though, these are two very different mediums and should be treated as such.
Don’t include too many images, too much copy, and too much stuff all around. Remember, people are busy and you’ve interrupted their day with the promise of something worth their time! Keeping things simple will help in this regard and remove distractions that may otherwise draw their focus away from the link itself.
6. Include Social Share Buttons
Try as you might, the offer in your email simply might not appeal to your recipient. It may, however, be perfect for one of their friends or family members. That’s why it’s always worth including one or more social share buttons in your campaigns!
This simple strategy gives your recipients the chance to share the offer with minimal friction. They don’t have to copy and paste anything into a new email or go out of their way to share it. You’ll open the door to free word-of-mouth marketing as a result and, even better, will see those click-through rates increase at the same time.
7. Clean Up Your Email List
One common reason for low click-through rates could be nothing to do with your actual emails and everything to do with your email list. Maybe it contains lots of invalid email addresses, for instance. Or perhaps there are people who signed up for a previous promotion and have no interest in your current one.
Whatever the case, it might help to audit your list before starting your next campaign. Go through it on a regular basis, check if there are any obvious issues, and clean it up. Now, this can be a hassle to do manually (our email validation software would make an almighty difference), but your email click-through stats should improve as soon as the right people start receiving your messages.
8. Segment Your Email List
Think about the array of different sources people have subscribed to it from.
You could have dozens of landing pages, numerous content upgrades, and a plethora of lead magnets on your site. As we just noted, some people may have joined from a specific promotion at a particular time. The result?
Your email list is full of people with different demographics, interests, and reasons for being there. For that reason alone, sending the same email to everyone on the list is a recipe for disaster. There’s a very good chance it’ll only be relevant to a tiny proportion of them.
That’s where segmentation comes into play. By segmenting your audience into specific categories in advance, you can send the right emails to the right people. That means you won’t annoy anybody for whom the content’s irrelevant; your click-through rate should increase as a result.
9. Make It Time-Limited
A sense of urgency is another useful tool at your disposal here. Make it your mission to create it in your emails! Adding a time-limit to a particular promotion will tap into your recipients’ natural aversion to loss (read: FOMO).
Basically, people hate the thought of losing out on something fun and/or somehow attractive. Seeing a timer ticking away will tickle this bias and compel them to act. It’s a well-known tactic that should work wonders in your emails.
10. Test and Experiment
Tracking and analyzing the click-through data from your campaigns will be important too. Why? Because you need to know what’s going on before you can ever hope to improve the situation!
Run A/B tests at every opportunity. Compare variations in your copy (including length and style), the colors (of the email background, links, buttons…), CTAs, structure, subject lines, and more. You can then analyze the results, see what works (and what doesn’t), and iterate on the basis of fact over fancy.
Do this over days, weeks, and months, and you’ll soon hone in on how to attain the best possible email click-through in campaigns.
Remember These Strategies on Improving Email Click-Through Rates
Finding ways to boost your email click-through rates is imperative to the ROI of your email marketing efforts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of marketers struggle with this endeavor and lose out on leads, conversions, and revenue in the process!
With any luck, though, the tips in this post will help you turn that situation around. Keep them in mind, put them into action, and you should be well on your way to newfound click-through success in no time.
Would you like professional support to clean up your emails and improve their deliverability? We can help. Contact us today to find out more.
