How To Increase Your Email Click-Through-Rate

Having a hard time increasing your Email Click-Through-Rate? Don’t worry. Maintaining a high email engagement rate is every digital marketer’s struggle. For email marketers, despite having the upper hand of being more exposed than your other digital marketing peers, you’re still not off the hook of this struggle. 

In email marketing, aside from having the right marketing automation, like Infusionsoft by Keap in Singapore, one of the most useful metrics for an effective email campaign is the click-through-rate. A survey from Ascend2 about what 300 marketers thought was the most beneficial aspect to monitor and track email marketing campaign results, showed 73% chose click-through-rate as number one.

What Is Click-Through-Rate?

Email Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is the percent of people who have made an email engagement through clicking at least one link from your email. This rate lets you assess whether your emails’ content, layout, subject line, etc. are effective and profitable in capturing prospects and engaging with subscribers. 

These ten (10) effective methods, together with the right marketing automation, will boost your email marketing’s click-through-rate (CTR):

By optimising these methods, the more likely it is for your email click-through-rate (CTR) to increase, and chances are, converting the maximum number of prospects, boosting your email engagement rate, enough to drive immediate results and achieve your goal and business’s desired revenue. 

1 – Optimising Your Call-To-Action  

The CTA or Call-To-Action is the cherry on top of your email marketing campaign. It’s where the action happens – “the clicking”. But by the time it’s out on your subscriber’s inbox, it’s a hit or miss, where it may require adjustments. Creating ‘curiosity gap’ is a good way to construct an impactful call-to-action. This is the cliffhanger for the copywriter’s, where you want users to finish the sentence: “I’d like you to…”, but not as straightforward. 

These CTAs would execute much better if it sounded the way how the users wanted to hear it. For example, instead of using “Grab your free copy now!” try to use “Grab my free copy now!”, which puts them in your users perspective. 

This way, you’re piquing and feeding off of their curiosity and interest. However, try to avoid going overboard and using misleading content, or else, they’ll think of your email campaign as click bait and bounce off immediately.

2 – Segmenting Your Email List

If you want to improve your click-through-rate (CTR) and deliver immediate results, list segmentation is an effective way to do so. Segmenting your list is as good as sending a relevant email to the right people.

For instance, you’re a digital marketer to a staffing agency. You have with you two (2) primary types of clients: Employers and individuals who are looking for job opportunities.  You’re planning to launch an email campaign, where you have to send emails to both of these groups. If you send the same email for both classes, chances are they’ll be skipping information that’s completely irrelevant for them, defeating the process.

But if you construct two distinct emails – one constructed for your group of employers and one for your group of workers – then, the more you can deliver much more valuable content to them, which will affect your click-through-rate.

3 – Email Personalisation

When you talk about personalising the content of your email, the first thing that pops up to mind is using your subscriber’s first name on the subject headline of your email. Well, it’s a good starting point, but email personalisation goes way beyond just using your subscriber’s first name.

There are other ways where email personalisation makes use of dynamic content. Utilise other information, such as your subscriber’s previous purchasing history, job title or their residence’s zip code, to design a personalised email just for them. Depending on how you make use of this technique can drive significant results to your click-through-rate (CTR). 

In a study conducted at the beginning of 2019, personalised emails have an average open rate, and click-through-rate was 25.36% and 21.84%, consecutively. 

4 – Mobile-Friendly Emails

Nowadays, there are more emails opened on mobiles than on personal computers. But you should be aware of the ‘fat fingers’ effect, where it describes how difficult it is to click a link of an email delivered on a mobile device. Apple’s recommended ‘click target’ size best for mobile call-to-action buttons in a narrowed space are 44 x 44 pixels. For other designers, like Orbit Media, their particular size is 45 x 60 pixels. 

Also, add at least 10 to 20 pixels of space on each side for people to avoid accidentally clicking a close by link. For text type of links, it’s best to keep the type a similar size and format them, where links don’t trigger another link nearby. 

5 – Using Social Media Icons

In a study conducted by GetResponse, stated that utilising social media icons on your email gives drastic CTR results than without the social media sharing buttons. An email with social sharing buttons boosts an average of 6.4% email click-through-rate (CTR), while without social sharing buttons only affects the email click-through-rate by 2.4%. 

The study shows that having social media buttons on your email boosts your email CTR by 158% on social networking platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

6 – Triggered Emails

Using triggered emails for your campaigns, such as auto-followups, auto-responds, verification, welcome and or transactional emails attract a surprisingly high engagement rate to your click-through-rates and overall results. Once a prospect shows interest to your business, these triggered emails strike and are prompted. 

Although, despite the performance record of this method, not many marketers take advantage of triggered emails. A report conducted by GetResponse based on the email marketing industry, only 18% of marketers are using triggered emails, which is a good sign for you to gain an edge from.

7 – Triggering The Sense Of Urgency

Having flash sales of your product and or services shows a sense of importance, where you prompt your subscriber to make a swift action, or lest they lose the chance of availing it. These limited-time offers trigger your customers, regardless if they need it or not, when you see a countdown timer, you get the feeling of making a run for it.

8 – Sending Emails Less Often

If you don’t want your email engagement rate to drop, stop emailing your subscribers too often. “Overmailing” only makes your emailing list fatigue, results will reflect on the open rates, click-through rates, and especially on conversion. You can solve this by offering your subscribers the option of how many times they want to receive emails from you. 

A study from MarketingSherpa shows 49% of the respondents only like to receive emails based on the frequency they choose. Sending emails more than three times a week shows regression of the read-rate per user. Thus, showing the influence of send frequency affects the open, engagement and response rate and the read-rate per user. 

9 – Testing Email

Other factors that affect the ways to increase your click-through-rate (CTR) include:

• How lengthy your email is. 200 words? 1000 words?
• What content you incorporate in the email. Images? Videos?
• Is there a format to your email. Text or in HTML?

There are a lot more others you can test: the effectiveness of your subject lines, any alternate offers, the send frequency, the segmented list, checking the spam score before launches, the creatives and layout, or whether it’s viewable on multiple devices.

10 – Resending Emails

When nothing else succeeds, you can still resend your emails to your subscribing list. It’s best if you group the people who didn’t open or click your email the first time you sent it. You can resend the designed email back to those non-openers only, and there’s no need for you to annoy your subscribers who already clicked. 

Wrapping It All Up

Your Email Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is one of the major factors of your email marketing. But, don’t forget that your primary goal is – conversion. With good marketing automation, like Infusionsoft by Keap in Singapore, you may garner a high number of click-through-rates, but remember that’s not your sole aim; What you want to happen is to get multiple clicks and, also, more sales. Make sure that’s what your desired result to happen to every test you’re running. Don’t wait for anything, start optimising your email marketing campaigns now!