Improving Your Email Click-Through Rates
27-02-2017
Boosting your email click-through rates is no easy feat. It takes an incredible amount of lead nurturing and consistent content building to maintain high click-throughs.
You might remember getting immense click-through percentages were when you sent your first mass email. Open rates were probably around 50% and click-through rates even higher. If these percentages took a steep decline after a few weeks of email campaigns, don’t fret. You can still salvage your remaining campaigns and make the most out of your subscription list! Here are four effective strategies to improving your email click-through rates:
Conduct Plenty of A/B Testing
As difficult as it is to conduct tests with your actual pool of subscribers, the only way you will really know what works and what doesn’t is by conducting A/B testing with this exact audience. The goal is to optimise your email campaigns in different ways to see what works best. For example, for one newsletter, you can write a more exciting subject line while boosting your actual content to match the quality of your headline. For the next newsletter, you can make more compelling graphics and place them at the top of each email. For the third newsletter, you can write a really promising subject line and place the reward content at the very end of the newsletter so users will have to see the entire email before clicking on the reward content. Once you figure out what works best for you, trim out the excess things and keep only your treasured findings. The less bombarded your newsletter seems, the more people will be willing to explore it!
Format Emails According to Content Hierarchy
As we’ve mentioned before, formatting emails according to content hierarchy doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be in this order: Most important, kind of important, least important. Yet, this seems to be the email structure that we see the most! There is a time and place to put your most important content in the heading, but if you always place your most valuable content first, the rest of the email will continue to be ignored.
Try different methods for content hierarchy. Test your next newsletter by putting the most important content second or even last. If you choose to save it for last, remember to tell your subscribers in the subject line or at the beginning of the email that they should probably scroll down. The best way, we feel, is to actually switch it up. Don’t make your newsletters super predictable all the time so that subscribers will actually look forward to exploring your email content. Also make sure to always include valuable content in your emails. The most important content to you isn’t always the most important to your subscribers, so always keep their best interests at heart to get higher click-through rates.
Include Clear and Concise Call-to-Actions
Every email should have at least one clear call-to-action. That could include:
- Signing up for your service
- Buying your product
- Liking your other pages
- Following your other platforms
- Reading your new content
Whatever that main call-to-action may be, it needs to be visually and structurally prioritised as the most eye-catching content in your newsletter. If your main call-to-action is overshadowed by something less important, then your click-throughs for that call-to-action won’t be as high as it could’ve been. There can be several call-to-actions in your email newsletter, but their levels of importance should be clear so your subscribers won’t be confused as to what you really want them to do. A great rule to stick by is to make your main call-to-action button a high-contrast colour from the rest of the email. Depending on your content for that week, you can also include your call-to-action keywords in your subject line, such as:
- Your exclusive content is here!
- Like our page and win a prize!
- Apply for our amazing service today!
Nurture Your List by Going Beyond the Mass Emails
This is overlooked by many marketers, but email marketing goes beyond the bimonthly emails. To improve your click-through rates the organic way, you’ve got to nurture your leads outside of emails as well. An interesting strategy we’ve been seeing is people creating Facebook groups to nurture their leads. The Facebook algorithm gives more priority to Facebook group posts than timeline posts, especially if you’re an administrator. So, perhaps you can start your own Facebook group, add all of your followers to the group, and start releasing valuable content there. Don’t just promote in the group, but offer great content that will add value to their time. Then, when you send the invitation to sign up for your newsletter, more people will be interested in what you’ve got to offer because you will have established trust with your leads!
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