Tips to get Maximum Click Through Rates for your emails

Tips to get Maximum Click Through Rates for your emails

Anyone who does email marketing knows the importance of having a good click through rate (CTR). This refers to how many of your email recipients actually click on the links in your emails. If your CTR is low, your email campaign can’t be profitable!

You can measure this essential number using tools such as Google Analytics. The real question, however, is how do you improve your click through rate?

Delivery, Open and Click Through Rates

Before you even consider how to improve your CTR, you have to consider your delivery rates and open rates. These are statistics that measure, respectively, how many of your emails get delivered and how many get opened by the recipient.

These numbers must be considered first because people aren’t going to click on your links if they haven’t received or opened your emails. The following are a few tips I would like to share with you, based on my experience, on how to increase your email’s delivery rates and open rates.

• Improving Delivery Rates

  If you want to have a higher delivery rate for your emails, you should keep the following tips in mind.

  Ask people to give you the best email address when you ask them to opt in. Additionally, remind them to white list your emails so they don’t end up in their spam folder!

  Use a high quality email marketing program or service. If you send your emails from a free platform such as Google or Yahoo! there’s more of a chance that they will get marked as spam, especially when you are sending bulk emails. Use a service such as GetResponse, AWeber or Constant Contact to get better results.

  Don’t use words in the subject that are likely to set off the recipient’s spam filter. You can find a full list of such terms, but words like “free”, “money” and “lose weight” are some examples. Using all capitals in the subject is another practice to avoid.

• Improving Open Rates

  Some of the tips regarding delivery rates also apply to open rates. Even if you manage to get your emails delivered, people are less likely to open them if they appear to be spam.

  You also have to think of ways to make the email sound important and compelling if you want people to open it. Keep these tips in mind:

  1. Use your name as the sender, not a company name. This personalizes the email and makes it more appealing.
  2. Avoid using too much hype in the subject line, such as “Important!” or “Please open!”, even if these messages don’t get marked as spam, people see such hype every day and will probably delete it.
  3. Consider the time of day. You may have to experiment with this, as the best time to send emails depends on your audience and time zone. While it was once considered best to send emails during business hours, this often doesn’t work anymore.
  4. You may have a better open rate on weekends, when people have more time to read emails. Try different days and times and find out which work best for you.

Improving Click Through Rates

Now let’s talk about the CTR, which is where you get your readers to take action. This is what really separates an email campaign that succeeds to one that doesn’t.

To improve this number, you have to do more than get your emails delivered and opened. You have to persuade people to actually click on that all important link!

• Don’t make your emails too long

  People have limited time and attention spans. Longer emails make it harder to focus on your call-to-action and are less likely to be read.

• Have a sales letter on the website

  If you have a longer sales letter, it’s better to have it on your website. Your objective with the email is to get people on your sales page. Don’t try too hard to sell people in the actual email.

• Have a prominent call-to-action

  Make sure your links are bold and set apart from the rest of the email’s text. Don’t be afraid to place them in several parts of the email, such as the middle and the end. Readers shouldn’t have to search for the call-to-action.

• Target your offers

  Make sure your offer is appropriate for the audience. If you have a poor CTR, it could mean that the people who are reading your emails aren’t right for what you’re offering. You may have to change your marketing tactics to attract more responsive readers.

• >Make your offer time sensitive

  This is a familiar tactic, but one that still works. If people think they have time to think over your offer, they will most likely put it aside and forget it. Give them a deadline, so they take action right away.

• Put a P.S. at the end

  This is another well tested technique that is proven to get results. Readers’ eyes naturally gravitate to the P.S., and this is another place where you can add your call-to-action.

Conclusion

In email marketing, you must pay attention to every step in the process. You need good delivery rates or your recipients will never even see your emails. If people don’t open your messages, you have no chance of success. Yet the CTR is equally important, as this is where you get readers to take action!

Some of the email marketing tips listed above are relevant for all of these metrics. A good subject line, for instance, will help with delivery, open and CTR rates. Even if you get people to open a message, you want them in the right frame of mind to click on your link.

Email marketing takes a lot of patience and testing. You have to be willing to try out different subject lines, writing styles and offers. As you refine the process, however, you’ll find that your CTR improves and your campaigns become more successful.