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If you want to succeed at inbound marketing then your email click through rate is one of the most important aspects. You need to target your emails to those who want to receive them. However, your emails may still get buried in your consumers’ overflowing inboxes or, even worse, their spam folders. And even when your email is read, it seldom results in a click. One can feel like, “Ugh, I simply can’t win.” Here are more than twenty essential pointers that will help any business. Increase the number of people who read their emails, the number of people who click through to their websites, and the number of people who become customers.
These tips are mainly based on using automated email processors to send your emails. So before jumping into the article and our reading our tips make sure that you are using an automated email processor like on of the following:
Avoid Purchasing email addresses
You’re probably thinking that in the beginning of an email marketing newsletter campaign, you’ll do whatever it takes to get the ball rolling and attract readers’ attention. Oh, I see. You shouldn’t give in to the temptation to buy an email list, no matter what other choices you find online. If you really want to have a hight email click through rate then buying email lists is not the way.
While there are many options for purchasing an email list, none of them will help your campaign succeed. Why? Nobody knows how engaged or qualified these email addresses are because their owners didn’t actively opt in to receiving stuff from you. As we’ll see in a moment, purchasing an email list also constitutes a breach of GDPR.
Buying lists of email addresses to spam is never a good idea. Read this article for further explanation.
Follow CAN-SPAM rules
In 2003, lawmakers approved a law called CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing). A legislation that defines the parameters of commercial email and promotional communications. It provides receivers with the legal recourse to demand a company cease sending them emails, and specifies the consequences for violators.
You may find the guidelines for CAN-SPAM compliance on the FTC’s website and must adhere to them if your email messages are to be considered legal.
A few highlights:
- Don’t send out emails without first include your real, live mailing address.
- Every email you send should provide an easy mechanism for recipients to unsubscribe.
- Spell out your name and contact information clearly in the “From,” “To,” and “Reply to” fields.
- Don’t use “no-reply” or similar sender names, as this makes it impossible for subscribers to unsubscribe from your newsletter.
- Don’t ever share your email list with anybody else.
Note: Please don’t take anything I say here as professional legal advice; I’m just not a lawyer. To learn more about this topic, you may visit the FTC’s website, and this page will provide you more suggestions on how to increase the likelihood that your emails will be opened.
Use a GDPR Compliant opt-in
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation that went into effect in Europe in May 2018. Basically GDPR is to strengthen protections for individuals’ personal data online.
No need to remember the entire bill, we understand its length. However, there is one major principle you should adhere to when creating your email marketing campaigns if part of your receivers live in Europe:
Conventional wisdom suggests that when customers arrive at a form on your site requesting personal information, you should provide them the option to join your email list and be kept abreast of any news or specials your company has to offer. Today, it is against GDPR regulations to have this box pre-checked. If you want to be in compliance with GDPR, you can’t just assume. If you want your European users and customers to receive your email newsletter; you must provide them a clear opportunity to opt in.
The email click through rate of your email marketing campaign may suffer at first, but this guideline can help. If you only include those who actively sought to join your list, you can feel assured that only your most engaged readers are getting your communications. This increases the possibility that recipients of your email will become qualified leads.
Always send an email to new subscribers within a day
It’s crucial to make the most of the time when potential customers are thinking about your business or brand. What individuals do in the first 24 hours after subscribing is important. It gives you a good indication of how engaged they will be in the future. It’s also a superb possibility for establishing a reputation and establishing standards.
If you aren’t using automated email processes to nurture and engage your current contacts, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Emails should be sent from a real person, not a company
Sending emails that appear to have been sent by a genuine person enhances their likelihood of being opened. Just the facts. This is because, according to our research, people are more inclined to open emails from known senders. For example from friends or family members, rather than from a generic address. Due to the high volume of spam received daily, many people will not accept emails from unknown senders. However, if the sender’s name and email address are unique to the recipient, they are more likely to open the message.
In the following case the top example gets much more clicks.
- Sender name: John Smith
- Sender email address: [email protected]
… instead of this:
- Sender name: Marketing Team
- Sender email address: [email protected]
Prepare a preview text for your email
Your email’s subject line and the first few lines of its content will be shown together in many email clients. This includes the iPhone Mail app, Gmail, and Outlook. Put simply, it’s a preview of the email’s text. The email client and the user’s preferences will determine the precise quantity of text shown. Keep it to 50 characters or fewer and use it to convey a concise summary of what you’re selling.
If you don’t provide a preview, the email programme will take one from the body of your message. This is not only unattractive but also a missed chance to pique the reader’s interest.
Make your subject lines Are clear and clickable!
Your marketing emails face stiff competition from other messages in their receivers’ inboxes. Make sure your subject line stands out. The greatest method to be noticed is to compose subject lines that are so intriguing. Therefore readers can’t resist clicking on them.
The subject lines of your emails should:
- Are super clear and understandable.
- Are fewer than 50 characters so they don’t get cut off, particularly by mobile devices.
- Use language and messaging that your target buyer persona is familiar with and excited about.
- Include verbs and action-oriented language to create a sense of urgency and excitement.
- Include an exclusive value proposition (like 20% off an item or a free ebook) so people know what they’re getting.
- Avoid spam triggers like “Cash,” “Quote,” and “Save.”
- Are timely, if applicable.
- Include their first names sometimes (it could increase email click through rate), or even add something about their specific location. (You’ll want to do this sparingly, like for your most important offers, rather than over-doing it and being repetitive or intrusive.)
write brief concise emails
The inboxes of everyone are stuffed with urgent messages. Why make things worse by sending an overly wordy email? Emails that are brief and to the point are preferred by most recipients. This way it is easier to understand what the point of the email is. Users are more likely to locate the overall message before deciding to take any action when they are reading through all of their emails in a short period of time. This helps users understand the point and increases the email click through rate. A more justification for sending brief emails. Having too much text is also a warning sign for spam detection software.
Short and engaging emails may be written in the same way that you would speak to someone face-to-face. If you really must send an extended email, try to split it up into many paragraphs. Because of this, your reader will have a much simpler time scanning the content.
Use one call to action per email
Do you recall my warning that many of your receivers would simply skim your email and move on without reading it in its entirety? You need to have a prominent CTA button that stands out for even the speediest email scanners. Without a call-to-action (CTA) button, you can’t encourage readers to take the steps that will help them and your company.
Put your call to action where readers can see it and it makes sense for them to take action. Include a call to action (CTA) to download a complimentary booklet detailing other ways to utilise your product in an email.
Positioning your CTA is the first step; the next is making the button itself. Fifty free call-to-action button templates are available for download right now.
Make sure to add alt text to CTA image
Email clients often automatically filter out graphics, including your call-to-action buttons. It’s possible that a sizable portion of your target audience may never notice your gorgeous, optimised call to action. They observe, rather:
Setting an image’s alt text, on the other hand, tells those who can’t see images in their email where to go to take action:
You may either use the email program’s rich text editor (right-click the picture and select “Edit” to make the necessary changes) or the email program’s HTML editor to input the alt text manually, as seen below.
<a href="HTTP://YOURLINKHERE.COM"><img src="YOUR CTA BUTTON IMAGE SOURCE HERE.JPG" alt-text="YOUR ALT-TEXT GOES HERE"/></a>Create clickable images
The end objective of every email marketing campaign is to get readers visit a certain website. You may improve your email click through rate by linking its photos to the relevant webpage without overwhelming the text with more links.
Instead of simply linking the text next to the image in the email that reads “download it here,” you should provide a direct download link to the file itself if you’re urging readers to download an ebook and have a photo of the ebook included in the email. You should also provide a link to the cover art for the ebook. Since visuals catch the eye of the majority of people far more often than words. You should provide your email list subscribers with as many access points to your ebook as possible.
Either right-click the image and select “Insert/Edit Link” from your email programme, or copy and paste the following code into your HTML editor to create a hyperlink:
<a href="HTTP://YOURLINKHERE.COM"><img src="YOUR IMAGE SOURCE HERE.JPG"/></a>Provide apparent links within text
In addition to a well-defined call to action button and visuals, it’s smart to provide links to your featured offer across your site. You may want to include one or more prominent text links to boost the likelihood of participation.
Place your CTA links higher Up
Making your emails more enticing to click on is one option. Put your call-to-action (CTA) button, text link, or clickable graphic towards the opening of your email.
Mobile users will find this to be extremely helpful. The mobile experience often involves plenty of scrolling, and sometimes some squinting, pinching, and zooming as well. In this context, more clicks may be gained by providing the receiver with something they can do as soon as they open the email.
Use Alt text for inner images as well
Once again, many automatic email programmes do not allow photos. (Here is all that Campaign Monitor has to offer.) If this is the case, the recipient will not see any photos until they actively request to see them or alter their default settings.
The use of alt text in email photographs ensures that readers will still be able to grasp your message, even if they are unable to view the images themselves.
Make the words in your alt text more actionable by include phrases like “Click here to obtain the ultimate content creation kit.” Including call-to-action language in the image alt attribute will make every image link more like a button. So for example if they don’t see the flashy GIF on a deal (or if they hover over a picture that does come up), the alt text will still entice them to click.
Do not use background images
This is crucial if your potential customers frequently use Outlook. Background graphics are completely invisible to Microsoft Outlook. Avoid using background graphics in your emails. Outlook is the fifth most popular email client, with a 7% market share (and that’s overall; your industry could have far more than that).
Take advantage of social sharing buttons
Getting more eyes on your link will result in more people clicking on it. Add social sharing buttons to your email to increase its longevity.
Many email services have pre-made layouts with social sharing buttons. All you need to do is plug in the appropriate URL. Here’s a quick guide to making your own share buttons for popular social networks if you don’t already have them built in.
Note that adding sharing buttons, rather than follow buttons, will boost clicks. The former will make it possible for your email subscribers to share the promotion’s unique URL with their own networks. The latter will make consumers more likely to interact with your business on social media by clicking Like, following, or adding.
Use ready made tweets to simplify the process
Making a decision or taking a step is more likely if all the barriers are removed. If you want to make it easy for recipients to tweet the great material you emailed them, you may do so by establishing what we term a “lazy tweet.”
Is there a straightforward approach to this? Making use of ClickToTweet, a no-cost service for creating unique links to be shared on Twitter. Start off by using ClickToTweet’s simple tweet maker. Next, input your tweet, your (trackable) destination URL, and any hashtags you’d want to use:
To get a fresh link, just hit the “Generate New Link” button. Next, connect it to your Twitter share button.
Create an email forwarding option
Prompting your audience to forward the offer is another technique to increase the email click through rate after its expiration date has passed. Emails with “Share With Your Network” calls to action were 13 times more likely to be forwarded, according to research by Litmus. Including a “forward to a friend” button (or social sharing links, as we covered above) motivates recipients to spread the word.
You may conclude your email with a little afterthought. You may say something like “No one in your organisation handles the company’s social media accounts? In case you know anyone who could benefit from this ebook, please share it with them via your preferred social media platform.” Connect the CTA to a ready-made email with a topic and body copy. As a result, all that would be required to send a message to a group of people would be to type in their email addresses.
If your email programme has a rich text editor, you may use it to select text or an image and then type a mailto:? followed by the corresponding URL.
mailto:?subject=Your%20subject%20here%20&body=Your%20email%20body%20text%20hereYou can also create this in your HTML editor. Here’s how to attach a mailto:? link to text:
<a href="mailto:?subject=Your%20subject%20here%20&body=Your%20email%20body%20text%20here">forward this ebook</a>And here’s how to attach your mailto:? link to an image, such as a sleek call-to-action button that says “Email This Offer”:
<a href="mailto:?subject=Your%20subject%20here%20&body=Your%20email%20body%20text%20here"><img src="YOUR IMAGE SOURCE HERE.JPG" alt-text="YOUR ALT-TEXT GOES HERE"/></a>Just make sure you use the “%20” tag to separate words! Otherwise, your message willreadlikethis (not too appealing, right?).
Make sure your Plain-text email version looks good
Your email’s recipients won’t all see the polished HTML rich-text version. Not all email clients can display HTML-rich emails, and some users may prefer to just read text.
This is what occurs when someone opens an email that hasn’t been optimised for plain text:
I know, right? Nobody’s going to take the time to decipher this jumbled mess, I’m afraid. So, simplify the body by removing unnecessary details like lengthy tracking URLs and cutting down on the amount of words used. If you want your email to reach more of your intended audience and avoid the spam folder, taking the extra five minutes to optimise the plain-text version can assist. It is important to remember that if you edit the actual copy of your plain-text emails, you run the risk of having them flagged as spam.
Make it mobile friendly and optimised
Litmus revealed in April 2016 that, after analysing more than a billion email openings, 56 percent of all emails were opened on mobile devices. Since last year, mobile openings have increased by 8%, as seen above.
They concluded, “This signals a peak for mobile market share and the longest continuous gain we’ve seen following the holiday season.”
More and more individuals are using their mobile devices to check their email and browse the web, making it crucial that marketers optimise their emails for mobile viewing. If they don’t fix this, they will lose a lot of customers.
How? Here’s a comparison between what occurs when photos aren’t mobile-friendly (left) and when they are (right):
Isn’t the second picture a much more pleasant sight to behold?
A few suggestions for making your emails more suitable for mobile devices:
- Smaller picture file sizes will help compensate for slower download rates experienced by mobile devices. You may use TinyPNG or another application to minimise your image files.
For optimal usability, make sure the call-to-action buttons and links are between 45 and 57 pixels in size. Why? An MIT research found that the average adult index finger measures between 1.62 and 2.08 centimetres long, which is equal to 45 and 57 pixels on a mobile screen.
Obtain mobile-friendly email themes. It’s possible that you don’t have the time or expertise to create a responsive template from scratch. Sometimes, licencing or purchasing email templates from the experts is the most cost-effective option.
Send test emails and check everything
Before pressing the “Send” button, it’s a good idea to perform one more check to be sure your email looks exactly the way you want it to. Check out how your email will appear in the most common email clients and on the most popular devices used by your target audience if your email marketing solution allows it.
In order to be sure your email will reach all of your recipients successfully, you should send out a test version to a small subset of your list before sending out the final version. Add these at the end of your email review process right now.
Clean up your email list
It’s tempting to hold on to every email list subscriber you gain until the individual decides to unsubscribe. They may not have unsubscribed, but inactive subscribers can ruin your email click through rate.
Make sure you’re only sending emails to those who are interested in receiving them by removing anyone from your list who hasn’t opened more than a particular percentage of your campaign’s emails in the recent past. This ensures that the email click through rate you get from your emails are indicative of just the most engaged of your readers, giving you more actionable insight into what works and what doesn’t about each message you send.
In addition, a reliable email list cleaning service will eliminate any additional potential spam traps from your mailing list. The sender reputation will be damaged by invalid, abusive, and transitory emails, thus it’s important to filter them out, explains Liviu Tanase, CEO of ZeroBounce. It’s understandable that you would like to increase your subscriber base. However, you can’t afford to do so at the expense of quality. Every email marketer wants to reach individuals who care about their brand. You can only do that if you are emailing only legitimate and active addresses.
Track each email performance
Your email campaign’s success rate may fluctuate from one month to the next. It’s important to monitor metrics like email click through rate to identify areas for improvement in your email text (of course, you’ll need an analytics platform to achieve this).
If, after sending out emails for a month, you see that ten of them receive twice as much attention as the other 20, you should investigate why that is. Can you explain the differences between the high-performing groups and the others? Can we blame the visuals? What’s in the headline? Perhaps your email list is divided into subsets and one of those groups isn’t responding well to the material you’ve been sending them.
Make your email campaigns more appealing. Use the information you glean from A/B tests you conduct using your email performance data to determine which option best satisfies your readers’ needs.
I know how challenging email marketing can be since I’m in it with you. In contrast, you can boost your email click through rate (and hence your number of leads) by tailoring your offers. Target the proper segments and pay attention to the finer points of your email design.
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