Despite the newer and flashier ways to market a business online, email marketing still stands strong as one of the best. It is personable since a person’s inbox is pretty much the most intimate corner of the Internet, thus making the marketing a one-on-one affair. However, sending emails is not the only part of the game here, but also convincing the individual on the other end to click on the link.
If you are looking to improve the click rate of your email marketing campaign, thus increasing your conversion rate, then you may want to take the following tips to heart.
Treat Subject Lines Like Headlines
Subject lines can make or break your email marketing as they are what make people open your emails in the first place. Good ones are honest, yet still enticing enough to make people want to see what is inside. In other words, they function similarly to headlines.
Do not use clickbait subject lines as they will only make readers feel cheated, and do not make them seem like they are yelling at readers since that is just rude. If you need numbers on your subject lines, then put them there as they will not hurt it at all. Just make sure that your subject line is under a certain length, ideally around 50 characters or less.
The most important thing about subject lines is that they should be a preview to a bigger story within the email. They should get readers curious as to what is next.
Include Social Sharing Options
It is a good idea to include social sharing buttons in your email as social shares are counted as clicks as well. User engagement is a sign of continued interest, so you should include things like social sharing buttons and other things that can entice readers to further engage with your emails and increase your chances of converting them.
Consider the First Sentence
Most email applications and platforms show the first few words of the email as a preview in the inbox, and it is more important than most people think. Readers instinctively read it to see what could be inside, like how people tend to shake a gift box to guess what is inside.
Just like the subject line, the very first sentence of your email can help attract readers into opening the email. Therefore, it should not hurt to put extra attention into crafting the very first things you say in an email.
Avoid Generic Links
If you do not want your email to look and feel boring, as well as not get caught by spam filters, you should avoid generic links in your messages. Not only that they do not stand out, but they can also make the email look like spam in some cases.
Perhaps it is unavoidable that you may use some generic links in your emails, but do try to avoid them as much as you can to prevent unforeseen problems in your email marketing campaign.
Make Email Personally From You
All emails show where the message was sent from, so people can get an idea of whether it came from an actual human being or an automated system. Adding an extra personal touch in your emails is a good idea as people are more interested in reading something from another person instead of just a system.
Have the email address that you are using for your email marketing campaign bear your name to give it more personal investment. That extra step can make your email newsletters more enticing to read by making them be straight from you, thus making them read the emails essentially in your voice.
Target Each Campaign
Your customers are all different from each other, so you should treat each campaign as such. By targeting each campaign, you increase your click and conversion rates by marketing to specific audiences and/or do specific things that are targeted to whoever is in your email list.
By doing this, not only do you make your email marketing campaigns yield more positive results, but you also show to your readers that you care about their wants, thus further connecting you with them and boosting the effectiveness of your marketing in ways that can’t simply be measured.
Use Email Authentication
Popular email platforms that most people use like Gmail and Yahoo Mail have powerful spam filtering systems that sift the junk from the “real” emails. That includes emails that may be sent for the purposes of phishing and scamming readers, which spam filters are especially sensitive to.
Email authentication decreases the chances of your emails being lumped in with them, thus making sure what you send goes straight to the inbox.
Clean Out Your Email List
In order to improve click rates, you must first improve open rates. The more people are willing to open your emails in their inbox, the more who may be willing to click on whatever you have. A good way to ensure high open rates is to clean out your email list.
Look for email addresses that most likely do not have actual human beings at the end of them. Email address that are no longer valid, bogus addresses (i.e. [email protected]), addresses with typos, addresses that tend to bounce your messages, and so on have got to go.
Most email clients have a function for cleaning these up, so make good use of it to ensure that everyone you are sending to is a live prospect.
Remove Distractions from the Email
Less is indeed more, and that is true for email marketing as well. Make sure that you add only what is essential in each email you send so that nothing distracts the reader from getting your main message. The email must convey a specific goal and distractions may take away from that, so consider what your email is really about and simply hit on that without having anything else around it that may steal the readers’ focus from it.
Whether it is extra elements in the design, additional links on the side, images that are not related to the main message or so on, you should get rid of them as much as you can and just focus on what you are specifically trying to achieve with that email.
A/B Testing
Regularly test your subject lines by having two of your best ones pitted against each other in a sample group to see which one is the most effective at making people want to read your emails. The two subject lines should not just be different in wording, but also in approach.
For instance, you can have one ask a question to the readers, while the other merely offer something that might be helpful to them. Different situations call for different approaches, so you should always try to find out which approach is best for the current situation.
Conclusion
It is one thing to send messages regularly to your email list, and it is another to craft emails that will make readers engage with them. If you have questions or suggestions regarding ways of increasing click rates in email marketing, feel free to leave a comment below. Thank you for stopping by.
