Ways to Improve Email Click-Through Rate

Email marketing is a great way to connect with customers and prospects. The key to a successful email campaign is getting people to actually open your message. Click-through rates are a valuable measure of engagement of your emails and an effective way to drive more revenue for your business.

Let’s take a closer look at CTR and point out a few ways to help generate better click-through rates.

What is email click-through-rate?

Click-through rate (CTR) is the measurement of how many people click on a hyperlink, call-to-action, or image within an email. Measuring engagement is a top objective for tracking click-through rates. Using click-through rates, you can gauge performance in:

• Overall brand interest or email fatigue
• Email content
• Link placement
• Link count
• Media type

Since CTR shows the percentage of subscribers who clicked your email, it’s a good indicator of what percentage of your audience is interested in your content.

Click-through rates can be calculated by taking the total number of clicks an email receives and dividing the number by the total of delivered messages. For example, if you send an email to 100 people and ten people clicked on an ad link in your email, then your click-through rate would be 10%.

What is a good email CTR?

Last year, the average click-through rate was 2.3%. According to a Finances Online review, average CTA will slightly go up this year to approximately 2.6% across all industries. Depending on the industry, a good email click-through rate should be between 2-5%. So, if your CTR is above 5%...wow, nicely done! However, if your email CTR is below 2%, then it’s time to find ways to boost engagement.

How to improve email CTR

Do you want to know how to advance your business’s email CTR? Of course, right! Here are a few ways to help produce better click-through rates.

1. Make sure your emails have a goal

Every time you send out an email, you should have a goal in mind. Are you trying to increase registration for an upcoming event? Do you want people to fill out an online survey? Is there a flash sale coming up? Make sure you’re communicating with a purpose so you can get your audience to take action.

2. Use persuasive and action oriented language

By using effective persuasive language, you demonstrate to your customers how a click or purchase is in their best interests. Stating information and benefits clearly allows people to make qualified decisions for themselves. Direct communication and a strong CTA help drive action and boost sales. Also, using numbers to demonstrate value, like ‘get 30% off’ or ‘increase your sales by 40%’ can help improve click-through rates and conversions.

3. Personalized subject lines

According to a Litmus study, 69% of people will mark an email as spam just because of the subject line. By adding the person’s name in the subject line, the email appears more focused…tailored to an individual’s needs and makes the content within the email feel personal. Preview text can also give extra personalization and insight to support your email.

4. Improve content

Relevant and relatable content in an email campaign will generate higher clicks. Create content that will benefit the viewer and keep them engaged. Once people open an email, the content is what’ll keep them reading and lead them to click your links. There are a few things you can do to make your content more effective like using animated GIFs, images, buttons, and videos to help keep a reader’s attention.

5. Eliminate distractions

When it comes to developing emails with high click-through rates, less is definitely more. By reducing clutter, subscribers won’t get distracted by additional stimuli and therefore will become more likely to click on a link. So, be aware of how much information is in the email and pare it down to the bare essentials.

6. Use buttons for CTAs

Win the click with a strong call-to-action. There’s something inherently satisfying in ‘pushing a button’. So, it makes sense to use buttons for primary CTAs in your emails. For secondary CTAs, text links do the job nicely. All in all, readers are more likely to click on key links, but can still be easily directed to secondary ones.

Placement of your CTA also plays a significant role in click success. For example, an Aalto University study found that CTAs placed in the left region of an email have a larger impact on click-through rate than CTAs placed in the right side with top-left.

7. Timing & frequency

Timing is such an important factor. If your email arrives when people aren’t available to act, they may never get to it. People are more likely to open and click your emails between 8PM and midnight. Frequency is also important to the email click-through rate. Send too few and people won’t remember your message. While too many emails negate your communication to be unwanted marketing noise.

8. Formatting

Formatting has a significant impact whether people read your email content or not. Here are a few formatting and optimization tips to keep in mind:

• Make your email mobile friendly - more people read email on mobile devices than desktop computers
• Avoid hiding key information in images
• Make sure the email width is right – emails too wide or too narrow can stop people from reading and clicking
• Create scannable emails – if an email is long, break it up just like a blog post for better readability

9. Test and test some more

Testing is how you know what’s working with your campaign and what needs tweaking. Test email subject lines, content, timing, and call to action. Anything you can think of…test it, learn, and repeat.

Start increasing your CTR

Ready to team up with a digital leader who can help improve your business’ email click-through rate? At Cuker, we generate results. By developing an effective email strategy, we can turn your prospects into life-long customers - boosting campaign engagement, CTR, and sales.

Sound like a plan? Let's click.

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