How to Increase Your Email Click-Through Rate

How to increase your email click-through rate to your e-commerce website

When you send a marketing email to your customers and prospects, you will often make a sale if the recipient clicks through to your website. Unfortunately, the increased smartphone use has caused a marked decrease in click-through rates on marketing emails even though the number of email openings on smartphones is increasing.

This declining rate is due to several factors. It is much more difficult to get someone to make a purchase commitment on a smartphone because it can be awkward for recipients to navigate a site on a smartphone, so they might opt to open the email later using a desktop or a laptop but never get around to doing so. It’s also possible your content isn’t compelling enough to entice the recipient to your site, or maybe you’ve used the same email template in the past, and the recipients are tired of seeing the same type of content.

Email marketing can be very effective in generating sales. Even though click-through rates on smartphones are declining, about one-third of online sales take place on mobile devices, so it’s worth your time to try to increase your click-through rate. Here are a few suggestions that could help.

Use video

Videos are very engaging, and they can help increase clicks and entice recipients to share them on social media, thereby increasing awareness of your brand. Video can be more effective than text in displaying your products or services.

Embedding video directly into the body of an email can adversely impact its delivery, so use an image with a play button on it instead. The button will give the appearance that the video will start playing when recipients click on it, but it will send them to a separate site where you host the video. Just be sure the loading time for the video is fast, or recipients might not wait around for it to finish loading.

Use teasers

Most of your customers are probably curious, so you may be able to entice them to click through to your site by offering them a “teaser.” For example, you could promote a sale and tell your customers in your email that they are entitled to a discount of 20%, 30% or 40%, but they need to click through to your site to find out how much they can save. You might even put a short time limit on how long the discounts are available (say three to four hours) to instill a sense of urgency. Many large retailers have experienced high conversion rates using this tactic, so it’s worth trying it.

Vary email format and content

It’s tempting to save money by using a standard email template rather than developing new content each time, but your customers may become bored with the same format and not bother to click through. Rotate your content to keep it fresh. You can highlight the most popular selling items on your site, or you could tailor promotions to your customers’ previous purchases. You could also provide gift-giving ideas for the various holidays throughout the year.

Email is still a viable marketing tool when you use it effectively.