Boost Email Click-Through Rate With These 7 Simple Tricks

Even up to this day, email marketing remains to be one of the best channels for reaching out to new and existing customers. In fact, there are 4 billion email users and are expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025.

What makes email marketing so important is that it goes beyond boosting customer engagement. If done right, email marketing can also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, as well as increase conversions and sales through leveraging on the sales funnel concept with the help of email marketing.

So, by using the right keywords in your email content, you can rank high in search engines.

SEO and email marketing

While there may not be an obvious direct connection between search engine ranking and email marketing, the two can work hand-in-hand to drive more traffic to your site, increase ranking, and boost sales conversion rate.

According to experts email marketing can increase your conversion rate by driving qualified users to your site by sending out targeted SEO content through email. You can also gain more social shares and backlinks that can further enhance your SEO effort, which is a great way to kickstart your digital marketing journey. This can be especially useful for small to medium businesses since they may be looking for ways to increase brand awareness as quickly but as cheaply as possible.

The combination of SEO and email marketing is considered the power couple of digital marketing. They are a match made perfectly in internet heaven.

But how do you know your email campaign is working?

Yes, the open rate may be a great metric to consider, but the click-through rate (CTR) must be the second most important to look into. Having a high open-rate is not enough if you’re losing readers after opening your emails. For your email marketing campaign to be effective, you need to ensure a high CTR.

And what is a good CTR?

The average CTR varies depending on the industry you are in. According to Mailchimp, open rates can range from 1.25% in the restaurant industry to 5.13% for the hobbies sector. To know what the best CTR is for your industry, you need to look at your current email CTR, which can be found in the dashboard of your email marketing service provider. Then, compare that with your industry averages. If it’s within the average range of CTRs in your industry, then you’ll want to ramp up your email marketing strategy to improve it even more. If it’s lower, all the more reason for you to work doubly hard to keep up with your competitors.

Boosting your email CTR

To get the highest ROI in your email marketing budget, aim for higher click-through rates to improve conversions and your bottom line. By enhancing your click-through rates, your emails will stand out from the 306 billion emails sent every day.

Check out these tricks on how to improve your email CTRs.

1. Be consistent with your brand and website.

The first thing you need to make sure of before sending your emails is to add your logo. Aside from that, you should also use the same colors, fonts, and other elements that you use on your website for your emails to be consistent with your brand and website. Why is this important? Consistency makes your emails easily recognizable. Your subscribers will immediately associate it with your brand, which means that your emails won’t be sent straight to their spam folders.

2. Create a sense of urgency.

One of the most effective techniques to use to improve your email click-through rates is to put limits on your offers. This encourages your subscribers to take action right away, increasing your CTR.

Urgency refers to an impulse or force that compels or constrains. By using the right words to create a sense of urgency in your emails, you’ll be able to compel your readers to take action right away. This means that you need to use time-sensitive words, like fast, hurry, quick, now, and while supplies last, to push people into doing what you need them to do – in this case, clicking on your call-to-action button.

You should also use a countdown timer to get your readers’ attention. A moving timer embedded into your email will surely catch people’s attention. More importantly, it will tell readers how much time they have left before the limited offer expires.

Aside from that, you also need to use a clear and direct CTA above the fold to ensure that people will see it as soon as they open your email. Use words that will easily tell readers to take the action you need them to do.

3. Segment your audience and offer targeted content.

Think about this: there’s nothing more annoying than getting emails about products or services that provide no value to you. And what’s the next best thing to do with emails that are of no use? Yes, straight to the spam folder. How does this affect you? You’ve just wasted precious marketing budget.

Segmentation of your audience is the way to do it. Instead of sending everyone on your email list the same offer every time, it makes much more sense if you break it down into different groups that you can target at different times. HubSpot says that businesses that segment their email lists get 18% more transactions, 24% more value, and 24% more sales. This is because segmenting allows you to create more personalized email content that your subscribers can actually understand and relate to. As a result, your audience will be more inclined to open your email and take your desired action.

When it comes to personalization, it goes beyond putting people’s names in the subject lines and the body of the email. It’s more about using customer data to customize the email marketing experience for each one of your subscribers.

4. Use proper timing.

Timing is another crucial factor when it comes to leveling up your email CTRs. People won’t be able to take immediate action if your emails arrive at a time when they have more important things to do. This is why you need to find out the best times to send your emails.

According to experts, Thursday mornings are the best times to send email campaigns. Some say you can get over 25% open rates for emails sent at this time. While a lot of people would say that Mondays and Fridays are generally the worst days to send emails, there’s really no hard and fast rule on this.

Research shows that the majority of online users open and click their emails between 8PM and 12AM. Similarly, you need to know how frequently you should be sending emails to your subscribers. If you’re going to send too few emails, people will most likely forget about you.

Back to the question of when you should send your email campaign. There’s actually no single best time to do so. It all depends on several factors – your audience, for one. However, if you don’t want your emails to get lost in a pool of emails and newsletters coming from different brands, you need to test the water to find out which days work best for you.

5. Get rid of distractions.

Just like landing pages, emails should be straightforward. Aside from using clear and direct messaging as to what you want your subscribers to do, you also need to make sure that your emails are free from any distractions. Anything that can disrupt a subscriber’s train of thought while opening your email must be taken out of the equation.

What is so important about sending emails that have a single message to your audience is to avoid making it look like you’re not really sure about your goal. If your goal is to get more sales, then your message should explicitly convey just that. Your desired action must also be clear in the words you use for your calls to action. Don’t let readers get distracted to achieve the objectives of your email campaign. Keep in mind that you’re spending money on these marketing strategies, which is why you need to make the most of it.

6. Make sure your emails are optimized for mobile use.

There are 1.7 billion people who use mobile phones to access their emails. In 2019 alone, email consumers receive an average of 96 emails per day. And 50% of consumers prefer email as the main mode of communication with brands. All of these numbers say that if you haven’t optimized your email campaigns for mobile use, then you’re missing out on a lot of potential sales.

7. Always start and end emails with a bang.

Subject lines are the first thing that a subscriber sees as soon as you send out your email. It only takes them less than a second to discard your email if they don’t like what they see. This is why it’s important that you start your emails as compellingly as possible.

Your subject lines should be enticing – they should make every reader want to click on it so they can read the rest of the email. Email subjects need to be direct, definitive, and provide value to your subscribers.

When it comes to ending your emails, you also need to make sure that you end them with a bang. Your closing lines must be as powerful as your opening lines because whatever you place at the end of your emails is as important and can draw as much attention as what you wrote at the beginning.

Bottom line

Taking the time to improve your email marketing click-through rates does pay off in the end. By increasing your CTRs, you’ll also be getting more leads and sales as a result. This is why you need to seek professional help from email marketers that know exactly how to solve the problem that is your email marketing click-through rates.