Your email Click Through Rate (CTR) refers to the number of people who clicked on one or more links in an email marketing campaign.

A high CTR means you’ve successfully enticed your audience to take action and go to your website or landing page. The CTR is a critical part of the digital sales funnel and according to research email click through rate is the most important email marketing metric. 73% of marketers’ track click through rates as the key way to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns.

As the number of promotional emails we receive continues to grow it is getting harder to get that all important click. So, if your email click through rate is below where you’d like it to be then it might be time to find ways to increase engagement.

There are many ways you can improve your click-through rates in your email marketing campaigns and we’ve put together 25 quick tips and pointers on some of strategies, tactics and levers that you can employ, improve or change to bring you success.

1.     Include A Clear Call To Action

Your Call To Action (CTA) is what is going to encourage people to click. So, you want your call to action to be evident within the email. Your call-to-action copy should also be action-oriented. Include words like submit, view, shop, and book in your call to action to encourage your readers to perform the specific task.

2.     Less Is More

When it comes to email marketing campaigns, less is always more. If you write a long and wordy email, your recipients will take one look at it and immediately click off the page. Also, if you give the recipient everything in the email you are reducing the need to click to find out more.

3.     Use Buttons for CTA

To prevent readers from missing your CTA, use buttons with hyperlinks. This will make your CTA stand out and easier to click, which is a big plus for readers on smartphones and tablets. Experiment with different shapes, colours and text to see what best captures your audience’s attention.

4.     Stick To One Target Audience

Rather than writing your emails to appeal to a large group of people, you want the email to focus on a particular audience. This way, you can cater to your target audience's likes and create content that appeals specifically to them.

5.     Segment Your Emails

You can segment your emails based on the recipient’s location, interests, transactions or demographics. Segmenting your emails will help to increase click-through rates because you'll be sending more relevant content. It also prevents you from annoying recipients with irrelevant offers. In fact, research shows that marketers who segment their emails enjoy 18% more transactions, 24% more sales leads, and 24% greater revenue.

6.     Make Your Emails Personal

Including elements of personalisation will improve CTR and shows you know your prospects and customers. Using insight from purchase history, download history and website activity will allow you to provide relevant offers and content.

7.     Write Engaging Copy

Engaging copy will arouse your readers' interests and encourage them to read the entire email rather than skim through it. Your copy should be exciting and relevant. Engaging copy will help your customers feel more connected to your brand, which can ultimately increase click-through rates for your email campaigns.

8.     Make Sure The Main Headline Links To The Subject Line

Whatever you’ve said in your subject line needs to be reflected in the main headline of the email so the reader has continuity and consistency. It quickly confirms to the reader that their decision to open was a good one and decreases the chance of not engaging with content.

9.     Get To The Point

Since most of your audience is reading on their phones, say what you need to say and move on. To reduce the likelihood that email recipients will get bored and delete it you can frontload your most important message.

10.  Get The Tone Of Voice Right

Most marketing emails should be conversational and have a light touch. Write your email like you were talking to a friend. Your sentences should be simple and concise, not wordy and confusing. Writing in a conversational tone will make your copy fun and easy to read.

11.  Create Urgency In Your Emails

While you don't want your recipients to feel overwhelmed when they open your email, you should still aim to create a sense of urgency. You can do this by including words like "now" or "today" that show your readers they have a limited time to perform this specific action.

12.  Remove Distractions From The Email

It's important to remove distractions from your email. Unless it’s a newsletter type email, resist the urge to include multiple messages and offers with the hope that at least something in the email will get a click. This is a signal that your email doesn't have a specific enough goal.

13.  Keep Your Email Design Simple

A cluttered, overwhelming email will likely end up in the trash bin. Instead, make your email design simple and easy to navigate. Include one or two images, and keep your copy short and to the point. This way, your readers can quickly scan the content and find the CTA.

14.  Above The Fold Is Key

Above the fold in an email refers to the part of an email that is visible without having to scroll. This is the part a recipient lands on when they open an email. Because attention spans are short it is important that key messages and CTAs are above the fold to encourage further scrolling or clicks.

15.  Optimise For Mobile

Around 70-80% of B2C emails are opened on a mobile phone and promotional B2B emails are going that way too, so your email campaigns must be mobile-friendly. You should employ a mobile first approach to email design.

16.  Include Offers And Incentives

Everyone loves to get a bargain or something extra. That’s why incentive email work astonishingly well in terms of boosting CTRs. To create an effective incentivised email, it’s important to consider the target audience, the offer, the subject line, the email copy, and the CTA.

17.  Include Great Images

While you don't want to clutter your email with too many images, you should include some. Photos can do a lot for your email campaigns, but you just have to choose the right images. Your email images should add meaning to your copy, they should be high-quality and they should relate to the content.

18.  Use Videos In Your Email

Adding videos to your email can increase CTRs by 200% to 300%, according to Forrester, videos are engaging and shareable, helping your brand tell a story. While videos may not work for all email campaigns, they can be very effective in some situations because they immediately grab attention.

19.  Keep It Brand Consistent

From your colours to your voice and tone, your company has specific branding elements that should be consistent across all channels including email. Brand consistency is one effective way to show your audience that you’re a trustworthy brand to encourage clicks.

20.  Try Different Layouts For Different Email Types

There is a balance to strike between consistency and repetition when it comes to email design and templates. If every email looks identical your recipients will start to see them as wallpaper and not engage. One way round this is to categorise different types of emails (newsletter, offers, sale, new products etc.) and give each a different layout.

21.  Include Social Sharing Options

Econsultancy published results showing that emails that include just one social sharing option generated 30% higher click-through rates than emails that don’t. Even if your readers aren’t interested in your email, they might know a friend who would be.

22.  Include A P.S. Section

The P.S. is a great tactic to reiterate an offer, or to attract the attention of email scanners. The eye is drawn to the visual call out of the P.S. it’s an old copywriting secret that people remember the first and last items in a list significantly more than the rest, this concept can pay off big in an email.

23.  Send Emails At The Right Time

When you send your emails can have a significant impact on click-through rates. Send it at the wrong time, and people might miss your message. Identify when your recipients are most responsive with tests of your email send times.

24. Get The  Email Send Frequency Right

Send too many emails, and you’ll end up in the spam folder. Send too few and you’ll struggle to gain cut-through, Try to follow a regular cadence with your emails— that might mean one email a month or twice a week, depending on your goals and your brand’s purchase cycle.

25.  Test And Retest

Support high CTRs by testing everything: headlines, offers, content, timing, and design. However, only test one element at a time with a simple A/B test otherwise you’ll never know which element has worked.

I hope this helps!

Further Reading

If you would like to find out about ways to improve email open rates - then read this blog