Once upon a time, email marketers sent out long emails that told stories, revealed how to do things, and sold products. Increased anti-spam measures require more due diligence to get your emails delivered to the recipient’s inbox. You may need some adjustments. Here are 6.5 easy steps to increase your clickthrough rate.
The problems came:
Emails being sent to the promotions folder. IP addresses blocked. Spam filters removing emails from existence. Domain names needing to be verified. Or Apple opening emails and scanning them so that you have no idea how many real people opened your emails.
Does email marketing still work? You bet it does. Email marketing is still the most cost-effective method to reach your audience and make sales.
But times change, and the way we email market needs to change as well. You will need to make adjustments to keep your click through rates up. If you strategize and adjust accordingly, you may actually be able to increase your clickthrough rates with these easy steps.
When you send out that email that took you so long to thoughtfully construct, it could evaporate into the mists of time never to be seen. It would be like you never wrote it at all.
But, place that same content on your website, and you can spark conversations while you cut your workload in half. Instead of writing an email and an article, you focus your efforts on just the article. Now you can send social media traffic to your article and also continue to refer back to it in future pieces of content and future emails, too.
Now, I’m not saying you should stop emailing. Not at all. But instead, you might update your email process so that it looks like this:
Adjustments to improve clickthrough rates
By sending out a short, catchy email that directs your subscriber back to your website, you’re increasing the odds the email will land in their personal folder. And you’re also going to increase your open rate as well.
Place your real message on your blog. Then send your readers a super short, catchy email that lets them know if they want to continue reading, here’s the link to do just that.
1: Send out short emails.
When you write to a friend, are you usually sending them a thousand words? Not likely. Google likes to decide what emails get through and which are relegated to the promotions bin.
2: Place your real effort on creating a database of content.
Instead of having to write articles and posts in addition to your emails, you get to focus your efforts just on the website content.
When you create something, you want it to be seen and accessible for longer than 10 minutes in someone’s inbox. Placing your content on your site instead of in emails allows new visitors to binge read your stuff and get to know you. And it has SEO benefits as well.
3: Encourage discussions on your site.
Some of your best ideas for future content and products won’t be your ideas at all. Instead, they’ll come from your readers. Give them the chance to interact with you and your content.
Encourage their feedback. Ask them questions. See what they have to say. And make new contacts and friends while you’re at it.
4: Use the ‘to continue reading’ phrase to boost clicks.
Using this method you’ll likely see your clickthrough rate greatly increase over time.
First, you’re sending out a SHORT email of just a few lines. Make no mistake, you still need to put effort into this email to get the click.
Entice them with the solution to a problem or with a great story. Then let them know that to read more, they simply need to click. This works like magic once you master the technique.
5: Segment your lists.
When you send them to an article about driving targeted traffic, offer them a cheat sheet or list of resources to get their email address.
Yes, you already have them on your primary email list, but now you also know they are specifically interested in driving traffic, too.
6: Whenever possible, use story telling.
Storytelling is pure magic for capturing attention, removing barriers and even making sales. Start many of your emails with a story and let them click the link to find out how the story turns out.
6:5 Send regular, short emails with appropriate wording.
Choose your words carefully. For example “Make Money” is sure to get your email sent to the SPAM folder. Try sending one short email every day for a month. Pay attention to your click through rate and see how it improves over the course of the month. And then decide if this method is right for you.
Improve clickthrough rate and keep you out of SPAM Jail
- If you don’t include an unsubscribe button in your email, you might go to the SPAM folder.
- If you don’t address your recipient by name, you might go to the SPAM folder. (Don’t use “friend” of “Dear” for example)
- If you use all-caps text or extreme punctuation !!! or ???, you might go to the SPAM folder.
- If you include strange formatted fonts, you might go to the SPAM folder.
- If you include links to fraudulent websites, you might go to the SPAM folder.
And a whole host of additional issues that you can learn more about in these resources.
GetResponse does a great job with providing and assessing data. They have an extensive Email Marketing Benchmark Report that is worthy of your time to review. Perform A/B testing and benchmarking and follow best practices.
Groove provides extensive best practices to follow to help prevent your emails from being kicked out by SPAM filters that IT companies utilize.
Hubspot has a great article on their blog that you may want to use as a reference. “The Ultimate List of 394 Email Spam Trigger Words to Avoid in 2023”
These adjustments can help preserve, or even improve your email clickthrough rates. The first step in any email marketing campaign is getting eyeballs on your content. You’re dead in the water if you can’t get your email to the inbox folder.
To your success!
Dave
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