How To Improve Click Through Rate In Email
This is a question many email marketers have asked at one time or another. However, to begin answering this query, you first need to understand what click-through rate means. Click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of times an email recipient has clicked on a link or an embedded view within your email message versus the total number of recipients that received your message.
Cover and subject lines are important factors in increasing your email CTR. A subject line should be a question or something that would entice the reader to open it like ‘How to double sales,’ ‘What makes more profits’ etc.… rather than just saying ‘Sales Report for January’. Also, make sure your email cover contains a clear call to action (e.g., sign up). This helps you to position yourself as an expert in your field and encourages the reader to take action.
Subscriber Lists
You can’t expect to improve the click-through rate by sending emails to everyone without doing a little research into who is most likely to be interested in receiving your message. Email marketing is about being selective about whom you email. For you to do this, make sure you know how many of your email subscribers are really active or even reading the emails you send them? If they’re not opening your mail, then neither will they read what’s inside it. So why waste time and resources on them? To check if your subscribers are still active or inactive, learn how email validation works here.
When creating an email list, you should make it a point that your subscribers must have opted-in to be included in the email list. This is important because if they were not given a chance or choice, they might get annoyed with you and simply unsubscribe without reading any of your emails. Try to choose a newsletter that has an opt-out function instead of opt-in. How? There are companies out there that offer services for email verification purposes. When creating an email list, visit their website and then create a campaign from where you’ll know how many people want to receive emails from you each time.
If this seems like too much trouble, then think again. It’s better to lose some subscribers than no one at all! By choosing those who want to receive emails from you and those who don’t, you’re more likely to receive a better click-through rate.
If you want to learn how to recognize Differences Between Click-Through rate and Click Rate check out our latest article!
Messages Structure
Your choice of words and writing style is another factor that influences how many people will open your email message. The simpler the language, the easier it will be for readers to understand what’s in there. Adding humorous content also helps deliver your message making it more interesting. The structure of the message matters as well. Split up your notes into several different parts so that everything isn’t all bunched together but make sure to include links back to your website wherever possible, so readers can download something or make a purchase if they like what they read about.
Improve Your Quality Score
Your email service provider will likely provide you with a Quality Score, which indicates how likely your subscribers are to click on the links in your email. Typically, the higher this score is, the more likely it is that improvement will be noticed. The Quality Score is based mainly in part on subscriber interaction and open rates. If you have fewer subscribers opening your emails, then you’ll likely also get a lower quality score.
When creating an email message, content includes both text-based as well as multimedia like photos or video clips (as attachments) to ensure that no matter what reader uses computers or mobile phone devices, they’ll still be able to read everything clearly without having to zoom about while trying to read through all the contents inside the email. If using pictures and video clips, it is a good practice to have text inside your email with the links to those contents. That way, even readers who don’t use multimedia-enabled devices can still follow along with what you’re saying.
Include Calls-to-Action
This is an imperative factor when trying to increase the click-through rate of emails. Having a clear call to action will help you put up more sales calls just by asking for it! Include words like ‘buy,’ ‘download,’ or anything that may make people want whatever you’re promoting at that time within your messages so they’ll go ahead and take action without needing any other invitation from you…The more transparent and more direct you are in what you ask them to do, the more likely they’ll follow through and reply to you.
Put It All Together
To increase your email click-through rate, include as much relevant information as possible while still keeping your messages brief and exciting. By doing all of this, you are making sure that even if not everyone opens up your average email message, at least those who do will know what’s inside it is something worth looking into.
Because including words like ‘buy’ or ‘download’ may take away from the content, you’re trying to put across, make sure there’s a balance between promotional talk and what readers should expect after clicking onto the link that takes them to your website. You want them to have positive feelings about whatever it is that you’ve got for sale while they’re still inside your email message. If they like what they see on your website, then maybe one day they’ll also return to read through another of your messages as well.
Re-prioritize all the emails you send out so that first and foremost is a link to something people may want or at least would find interesting enough to click onto. The fact is that once readers get used to receiving hundreds or even thousands of emails in their inboxes each week, most don’t have time to go through everything and often discard entire categories without even opening them unless something catches their eye from the outside first (the subject line). This practice makes it really hard for just about anyone using email marketing strategies with no clear goal in mind other than sending out as many messages as possible and hoping that people will somehow come back for another.
Note: Increasing the click-through rate of your emails can be done by realigning what you’re doing in order to make yourself stand out more among the masses of marketers using email marketing strategies today.
For example, if I wanted to increase my click-through rate right now, one possibility would be to have an introductory offer that’s only available if they respond directly. This kind of message may actually not draw much attention from those who are really interested in what I’m selling, but it still offers a chance for me to engage with them better, so maybe later on down the line, when I present them with genuine offers they’ll give me a try then, too (in fact, it’s a very effective marketing strategy).
More Resources
How can you make sure your email has the best possible chance of increasing click-through rates? Well, for starters, you could include more relevant information to improve its chance of being seen by those who know and care about what you have to say, and so they are more willing to click onto links inside the message where they find out even more. Getting as many relevant details as possible will help you get better click-through rates in addition to making things easier for everyone who gets their hands on emails from you.
One way I recommend doing this is by sending fewer messages but with more exciting content. If each email includes more relevant information, then readers are less likely to ignore them altogether because it wouldn’t take long for people to figure out what you’re all about. Plus, remember that once you get a better reputation or even just a tiny following, some of those who see your emails each week may be willing to click onto the links you include in messages later on down the line as well.
Test Different Ad Types
To find out what works best with your audience. Pay attention and monitor click-through rates over time on a regular basis if you want to track the progress you’re making with email marketing campaigns.
Be sure to include an image or infographic that makes readers curious as well. If people are more intrigued about what they will find if they click onto your website, then there’s more of a chance that many of them will do it now instead of later on down the line at some point. Once upon a time, when someone got an email in their inbox, really, the only thing drawing them inside was whatever message appeared in their inbox because that’s all they could see (and often not very clearly). Now, however, things are different – there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes, so there is much, much more to look at.
Regardless of how it’s done or what you’re selling, a click-through rate that increases with time will be something worth looking into once upon a time. And if you give some thought to these ideas, I’m confident you’ll see results!
Create Tightly Themed Keyword Groups
When you work keywords into your email messages, try to come up with a keyword group for each messaging type. This will help you get much higher click-through rates because those who receive emails from you know what to expect and are more likely to open them when they arrive in their inboxes.
Keywords can be used to make sure the overall tone of an email is consistent with others sent by your company. And if that’s not enough, then at least put keywords into text-based subject lines, so readers know right away where a message that includes them comes from (e.g., “from [your company name]”). It only takes a few seconds, but it could really pay off later on down the line with click-through rates!
How Do You Calculate CTR For Email Marketing?
There are two ways to calculate email CTR, depending on how you’re setting up your email campaign.
If you’re sending a single email with multiple links (e.g., an e-newsletter) then the basic formula for click-through rate is:
Single Click Through Rate = Clicks / Total Unique Clicks
(6 clicks from 100 unique visitors will give you a 6% CTR).
If your campaign includes multiple emails with a single link (e.g., order confirmation emails with one link back to the homepage), use this formula instead:
Single Click Through Rate = Clicks / Total Unique Emails Opened
(1 click out of 1000 emails opens means that 0.01% of recipients clicked through).
Here are some example benchmarks for click-through rates:
2% average click-through rate is pretty low, but it’s still better than zero! It means that just over 2% of your recipients opened the email. Anything above this number is getting you closer to SEO success and some good branding.
You can go up from there – eMarketer found that emails with a 4 to 6 percent CTR get the most sales, and around 10% if it’s an order confirmation email. This benchmark study suggests that more personalized emails will give you higher click-throughs, as well as subject lines that promise an offer.
This kind of data comes from a variety of places – including your own campaigns’ performance and studies like these.
How Can I Improve My Click-Through Rate?
It’s such a vague question that it’s impossible to answer beyond essential tips or tricks as outlined below:
- Make your subject lines enticing and relevant build an engaged email list Reduce SPAM Relevance.
- Put the most valuable content at the top of your email content. Make it easy for your subscribers to access your email.
- Include a link in your email to make them easier to click and if you can, try an image header. Test different times of the day and put time into segmenting your list. Use social media marketing networks – Facebook in particular. (This may seem obvious, but I still see many businesses solely focus on email as a means of getting traffic.)
- Don’t be afraid or think that you are intrusive if you want to share something valuable via email – people are waiting for recommendations from their friends about products/services they should use or trying some new recipes on Pinterest.
Summary
The click-through rate is a percentage derived from how many people open the email and how many people see that email. If you are getting 2% CTR, it means that out of your entire mailing list, only 2% (or less) opened the email. The higher your click-through rate, the better because it means more people want to read your email.