Blog

Monday 27 October 2014

Improving email Click-through & Open-rates for better email marketing






Email marketing is a key tool in growing your website traffic; this is achieved by recipients clicking the hyper-links included in your email. However, the first step is actually getting your subscribers to open your email; here are some key ways to increase your email click-through rates.

Subject line
Improving your subject line is considerably important when getting your recipients to open the email, stats show that “33% of recipients open emails based on the subject line alone.” MailChimp recommended that the subject line of an email should between 16-27 characters which has an “11.6% click-through rate”. The best subject lines include words that are time sensitive, enforce a matter of urgency or are some sort of announcement & event invitation.

Within the email subject line there are a couple of key things that should be avoided, such as capitalizing your entire subject line, using exclamation marks or using the word free. Subscribers lose interest in reading or opening your email when they are overloaded with constant sales and promotions.

Segmenting your list
Creating content that your clients will be interested in is key in increasing your click- through & open rates, this is because different subscribers read different information. Using subscriber location, inter nests, or activity to segment your list, so you can send the right content to the right people. Segmentation helps create stronger campaigns and build trust with your subscribers and send targeted messages about specific product ranges to the right people.

Perfect your timing
Analysts generally agree that the best days to send emails are Tuesday to Thursday, either first thing in the morning or immediately after lunch. However, research from e-marketing firm Pure360 found that 48% of emails are opened outside traditional office hours. The best way to work out which time is best for you is to text different times.

Have a call-to-action.
This is what you’re asking your customer to do, e.g. “20% off all this week”, “check out our new range”… keep this to a minimum, and include the same call to action throughout the email to improve click-throughs.

Improve click rates
Once your email has been opened a few things can be done to improve the click-throughs such as, making links more effective, “want to find out more about our Christmas deal” or “click here to find out more about our Christmas deal” rather than generic phrases like “click here” make the customer aware of what they will be clicking through to. And make sure links are duplicated with the content giving the recipient more options to click-through.

Finally one of the key things regarding email marketing is making them mobile responsive, meaning customers can open and read their email anywhere. Over 50% of people open emails on a mobile device, and 75% delete it if it is not easy to read. MailChimp offers mobile responsive templates so definitely use them.


If you would like to find out how email marketing could benefit your business, then contact Swimming Hippo on 01386 764 747 or create@swimminghippo.co.uk for more information.