5 Ways to Improve Email Open and Click-Through Rates

As any digital marketing agency will tell you, email marketing is part of any well-rounded strategy. Whether you’re promoting a new product or rebranding your business, emails will be your best friend.

Not only are they perfect or disseminating information, but they’re also a way to always be on your audience’s mind (as long as you don’t overdo it with the ‘send’ button!).

For one, email marketing generates a staggering   $38 for every $1 spent. Second, email marketing is also the leading marketing method in the US, and the preferred marketing and communication channel by American consumers.

Out of all the digital marketing channels at our disposal, email is the most powerful. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, if you embrace email marketing, you’ll find that your efforts and financial investment will pay off big time. - Neil Patel

In conclusion, why you need an email marketing strategy? You need it so that comes with high open and click-through rates. Therefore, if you want to solve the ‘high open rate low click rate’ dilemma, or just how to get more clicks on email marketing endeavors, this list of tips is just for you.

1: Make the Subject and Opening Line Count

For email marketing how to get clicks is all about the subject and opening line.

The subject line is the very first thing your recipients will see and, more often than not, will determine whether they’ll immediately click ‘spam’ or actually take the time to open and read (more like skim) the email. In other words, it’s the most crucial part of your email and functions to capture your audience’s attention and pique their curiosity.

After all, how can you expect a click-through if they don’t even open the email?

Of equal importance is the opening line, as most browsers display the subject and opening line together in a nice little bundle that informs your recipients what to expect.

With both, you have to make them curious, create a sense of urgency that compels them to open the email right then and there, and more so for the subject line, keep it on the shorter side for mobile users.

Recommended: How to Combine AI into Email Marketing To Boost Conversion Rate

2: Integrate with Social Media

Emails with one social sharing option generate 30% higher CTRs than those without, and that number is bolstered to 55% when three or more options are present.

The thing is, your recipient may not be interested in what you’re offering them, but they very well know someone who is. And by offering the option of sharing the content in your email, you’re letting them do so, which also functions to increase your reach and audience.

3: Always Segment and Personalize

The last thing you want to do is hound your audience with irrelevant offers that have nothing whatsoever to do with them — that’s the fastest way to an unsubscribe. Instead, be like a digital agency and segment your audience to create targeted emails that increase your chances of getting a click-through.

Relevancy is extremely important, and by segmenting you’ll have a better idea of what each group wants and will respond to. For example, you can segment by geographic location (e.g., offering discounts on winter boots for New York subscribers and discounts on sandals for their Californian counterparts), industry, or age.

Likewise, you should always personalize each email for further targeting. As Dan Jak says, “Personalization – it is not about first/last name. It’s about relevant content. It’s always good to use their name as opposed to ‘Dear valued customer,’ but what you want is to use your audience’s purchase, download and browsing history to send more relevant offers that are more likely to increase your CTR.

If you’re still undecided, rest assured knowing that 57.33% online retailers believe personalization drives the most conversions, closely followed by segmentation at 56.67%.

4: Optimize for ALL Devices

If you want to know how to improve your email newsletter, optimize for all devices so everyone can enjoy and benefit from your emails. The reality is that we live in a mobile-first world in which most of us go everywhere with our phones, and opting out of a responsive email design will only end up hurting you.

In fact, Apple’s iPhone has the leading email client market share (28%), and the iPad is third (11%). Translation: you have to optimize for all devices, not just desktops.

5: It’s All About Testing

Last but certainly not least, it's all about testing when it comes to increase the click-through rate. To get the best results, you have to know what’s going to work, otherwise, you’ll just be wasting away your efforts sending the wrong emails. You’ll want to test your subject and opening line, CTAs, tone, text body — everything.

And by testing I’m not just referring to testing all the components that go into your email, I mean putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and sending yourself a test email to make sure everything’s working perfectly. For example, make sure that:

• Every link is clickable and takes you (them) to the correct landing page
• All photos and videos load and play properly
• You’ve gotten rid of all spelling and grammar mistakes

Let’s Take a Second Look

Apart from everything we covered today, you may also want some examples of some brands doing email marketing the right way.

No worries, we’ve got covered right here. So, unless you’re a digital marketing agency that already knows everything we covered today, here it is all over again:

1. Make the Subject and Opening Line Count
2. Integrate with Social Media
3. Always Segment and Personalize
4. Optimize for ALL Devices
5. It’s All About Testing

Good luck emailing!

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