While email marketing may seem like a thing of the past, research shows that email is still the best channel to reach people, even with the growing popularity of social media and other messaging platforms. In 2021, approximately 309.6 billion emails were sent and received daily, with this figure expected to increase to over 370 billion by 2025. Email marketing will always be a great way to connect with your customers, prospects, and everyone else important to your business or organization, but do you ever wish your emails did a little better job of engaging your audience? In this blog post we will discuss ways to improve your email click-through rate so that you can achieve better results overall.
What Is an Email CTR?
An email click-through rate simply refers to the number of recipients taking action and clicking on the links embedded in your marketing email. In fact, it’s one of the most important email metrics to track overall. While many marketing platforms calculate this automatically, understanding how to calculate email CTR is pretty easy. First, you divide the number of subscribers who clicked on your email by the number of emails sent and multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage. For example. If you send an email campaign to 100 people and 10 people click on the links within your email, your CTR would be 10%. A higher CTR suggests more relevance for your readers.
What’s a Good Email CTR?
Now that you have a better idea of what email CTR means, it’s time to determine what a good email CTR is. According to a recent study, the average CTR for most marketers is 7% with the average email open rate landing between 15% and 25%. Whether your number falls higher or shorter than that average, we have compiled a few tips you can follow to improve your email CTR overall.
Top Ways to Improve Email CTR
Successful marketing requires engagement, and when it comes to improving your CTR, there are a few ways you can improve your email click-through rate for even better results. After all, more clicks could mean even more traffic to your website and more people acting on the offers included in your emails.
- Test Your email subject lines: Since the email subject line is the first thing your recipient sees, it’s important to get them hooked right away. Many times, it can be very tempting to create a catchy subject line that has no relevance to the email copy. While this tactic can generate good open rates, it comes at the risk of being marked as spam and can ultimately be seen as deceiving and can negatively impact your brand’s reputation. A great way to test your subject lines is to send two versions of your email campaign and compare the open rates verses the CTR. This way you will get a better idea of what actually resonates with your audience and generates action verses a high open rate with no action at all.
- Use personalization: Try and add as many elements of personalization to your email content as possible. When a recipient feels that an email is personalized and relevant to them, they are more likely to click it. Using a potential client’s first name once in the subject line and a few times in the email body can work like magic and make them feel special. Gaining additional knowledge about prospects you are targeting will also help provide personalized, relevant offers which can result in more click-throughs.
- Send emails at the right time: Are you aware of the best time(s) to send emails? Spend some time researching what works for others in your industry so that you can understand the best timing that will likely get you the most clicks when your audience is in the right frame of mind. This is something you should keep an eye on as you continue to evolve your email marketing strategy to help ensure you fine tune dispatch times based on what the data tells you converts best.
- Use compelling images: Email campaigns with compelling images have a 42% higher click-through rate. Visual content is much more effective in capturing your readers’ attention and can also help them understand the message quicker. Also, using interesting and clickable HTML buttons can ensure your email will load faster and allow your audience to easily see your call-to-action (CTA) clearly.
While these are just a few ways you can improve your email click-through-rates, the overall understanding is that email CTRs are an essential metric for any email marketing campaign and can really play a significant role in getting your potential clients to take action. Certain tactics might not necessarily work for your industry, so trial and error, plus patience, are key to success when it comes to email marketing.
As a small or medium-sized business, you may not have time to dedicate someone on your team to really maximizing your email marketing initiatives. If that’s the case, we would love to help! Contact us to learn more about how we could serve you.
