5 Tips for Improving Your Email Click-Through Rate

Email marketing is one of the best ways that you can connect with your clients. Unlike other more impersonal online marketing tools, emails let you speak directly with your customers in the web space they visit most often, their email inbox. But with inbox filtering becoming more and more sophisticated, you’ll need to put in some added effort to make sure that your message gets noticed.

Worry not! We’ve compiled a handy guide for how your email can standout in an increasingly cluttered inbox. Here are 5 golden tips for how to cultivate the perfect email to get the most clicks from your clients.

1. Captivating subject lines

The most important aspect of your email is your title. Your email title is about more than just giving your reader insight into your subject matter. It is the ultimate deciding factor as to whether or not they’ll go through with opening email at all. With so many emails flooding your audience’s inbox daily, odds are that not all of them will go read.

Try these quick tricks to stand out in a crowded inbox and ultimately increase your open rate.

• Keep your titles short

  Subject lines between 50-75 characters are less likely to get cut-off in inbox and are thus more eye catching and easier for your audience to digest.

  Don’t worry about not getting everything you’d like in your title. Once your viewer has committed to the click, you can rework your title in the body of your email, where there’s more room to play with.

• Make things personal

  Consider using your client’s first name, profession or personal pronouns to make your email look like it’s tailor-made for each reader.

• Use the title to highlight what your client will gain from opening your email

  While you may be focused on promoting your company, the most successful email titles appeal to your audience’s benefits.

• Testing your subject line

  This is an important trait in your email marketing efforts. Consider dividing your list in half and sending two different subject lines and pin your results against each other and see what title comes out on top.

• Take risks

  Shock factors, interesting facts, teasers and questions are all great strategies to make your title more clickable.

2. Beware the filters

After you’ve spent all that time crafting your perfect email, the last thing you want to have happen is for it to end up in your audience’s spam folder.

Having certain words like “free”, “per cent (%)”, “help” and “buy” in your title, can trigger inbox filters and send your email to your user’s spam folder. This means that you’ll have to be a little creative in your title’s construction and do a little research as to what words are best to avoid.

3. Keep your content short

The main point of your email is to captivate your audience into getting to know your business better and take the next step to becoming a loyal customer.

People don’t have the time to read long paragraphs in their inbox. Use your email as a preview for what your customers can expect to see on your website so that they’ll be tempted to click onto your website to learn more.

Consider using numbered lists or bullet points for easier readability.

4. Use your email as a teaser

Like we mentioned above, think of your email as a teaser that is meant to lead your audience onto a next step, like visiting your website or physical store.

In order to ease your audience into that next step, you’ll need to make your plea by way of clearly marked links and CTA buttons. Improve your CTA by making sure that your links can be easily distinguished from other text in your email by way of bolding, underlining or a change in colour.

While your email may be incredibly important to you, not everyone will have the time to read it all the way through. So make sure to place a link in the upper part of your email, so that it doesn’t go unseen.

As with any clever courting, a little persistence can also work wonders. Placing your links or call-to-action buttons more than once in your email is totally cool, but remember there’s a fine line between persistence and pathetic.

When it comes to your CTA, consider playing around with different mediums. Unlike your website, buttons and graphics are prone to shift or disappear all together in emails. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to use both written and visual CTAs in your email to make sure that everyone can see your message loud and clear. And of course, it’s important to take the time to write a persuasive call-to-action to improve your click-through rate.

5. Timing is everything

The time of day that you send your email can play a big role in its success rate. The ideal time to send emails differs from business to business, but generally speaking, most people send their mails on weekday afternoons.

Like your titles, testing the timing that you send your emails can work wonders. Consider sending your emails out in two batches to see what day or time has a higher open rate.

Email timing isn’t only about time of day. When sending an email, it’s important to keep your communication consistent. Just hosted an event? Send a prompt followup email. Accepting donations? Who wouldn’t appreciate a timely thank you note? Catching your audience while your relationship is still fresh can beef up your rapport with your clients and make them life-long supporters.

SOURCE: Wix