Let’s face it – businesses thank the creators of the internet everyday for the amazing growth and advertising opportunities it offers. One of the best opportunities the internet provides is email marketing. People check their email multiple times a day; studies have even calculated that we spend 13 hours, or 28% of our work week, managing our email accounts. The time we spend on email gives businesses a great chance at converting customers and sales.
Here is the problem – people are pretty savvy at sifting through their email. Marketing emails from businesses are often deleted without opening for a variety of reasons, decreasing the open rate. Many businesses don’t realize they are doing anything wrong with their email marketing, or do not know how to combat the problem of low click through rate (CTR). If you are one of these businesses, here are three ways to improve your email marketing CTR.
Make Your Subject and Description Engaging
To get your audience just to open the email, your subject line and short description need to capture the audience’s attention. There are going to be hundreds of emails in that inbox – what is going to make yours stand out?
Keep your subject line under 50 characters and don’t sensationalize it. When you go over the top with your headline to grab attention, people feel you are not authentic and will discard your email. Make it simple, inviting, and try to personalize. Adding in the receiver’s name can help.
You also want to keep the short description next to the subject line under 50 characters. This is a great opportunity to further engage your audience so they know your message and want to learn more. If you choose not to add a description, the email software will automatically put the first few lines of your email in the description which will not make sense to the audience.
Put Yourself in Your Audience’s Shoes
Before you start to compose your email, you need to get an idea of what to write about. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. If you were receiving an email from your business or the industry your business belongs to, what solution would you want from them to convert you to a customer?
Once you answer that, you can start writing your email. After you get your audience to open your email, the content that solves their problem and offers an easy or affordable way to do that is what causes people to click through to your website.
Optimize for Mobile
This is a message many businesses aren’t getting. For all aspects of digital and online marketing, your content needs to be optimized for mobile. What does this mean? The marketing content or call-to-action you want your audience to read and follow through on needs to be easy to read and click through on mobile devices. 60% of internet access is mostly mobile and that number is increasing everyday.
When it comes to email marketing, studies show people may open your email on mobile but will delete it if it is not easy to view on their device. Optimizing your email message for mobile will increase your CTR.