Email Marketing Weekly

There’s several different types of email marketers out there… Some, who think email marketing is all about opening Outlook, selecting all their contacts, and attaching a nice big PDF file and hitting send, and others who think the email needs to look drop dead sexy for anyone to care. Then, there’s that rare breed, who realizes, that maybe, just maybe, you need to step back and actually think and ask… Is there’s another way? Well, here are 10 easy steps to improve your email marketing and increase email click-through… in no particular order.

1. Lay off of all those damned images. Sure, they look nice, but more and more people have images turned off (either by choice, or by default). Is your copy all images? If their images are off, the recipient isn’t ready anything. You can keep images, but use them as accents, and make sure they don’t contain critical information (like price… headlines… ‘click here’ call to actions…)
2. Think about your subject line. It’s easier for me to hit delete, than it is for me to open an email… its fun too! When writing a subject line, take into account your ultimate goal. To inform? To sell? To remind? Keep it short, keep it interesting, and keep it relevant. And while you’re at it, keep it from sounding like spam. ‘Save up to…’, ‘Act now…’ , ‘from only $9.99…’, ‘cheap generic Viag… d’oh!’… the list goes on.
3. Tell me who you are… really. The sender name often builds credibility. Having your generic company name ‘XYZ Corp’ wont entice me nearly as much as if I have a pre-existing relationship with an actual person there. If Jim, from ‘XYZ Corp’ is emailing me, I’m more likely to open the email. In reverse, if I stumble upon your site and sign up to your mailing list, maybe ‘XYZ Corp’ should be responding and not Jim… because as nice as Jim is, I don’t know who his is at this moment. Speaking of Jim, most email tools let you customize your sender name – some, can even do it on the fly using a database field. So Jim, Suzy, Sally, and Roberto can build their relationships, without ever lifting a finger.
4. Sometimes… enough is enough. Marketers tend to be their own worst enemy when it comes to email marketing. Just because we happen to have a promotion, does it really mean we HAVE to send it to the entire list. Over-mailing a list will start to erode your database. As much as we all love to know about the brand new widget, on sale now… You told me about another brand new gizmo yesterday, and that special on Monday, and that last minute deal on Friday. You’ve crossed the line from relevant, to Spam.
5. Click… click… click!!! Sometimes, a button that says ‘click here’ just doesn’t cut it. Customers will click anything it seems. Make your images clickable, your headlines clickable, and some text in your copy clickable. Recipients tend to like to click on something if it remotely appears clickable to them (people are weird that way…). And yes, make your logo clickable too!
6. Fine… now give me a reason to click. If you send me an email, telling me about your brand new product, you better have a link to more details, pricing, and contact information. Assuming I’m interested, I’ll probably want to click on the spot. I don’t want to have to phone, or wait for the next email to learn more. I’m impatient. Its even better if you give me an exclusive 10% off since I subscribe to your emails. The call to action needs to be strong, and enticing.
7. Don’t send yourself to my Spam folder. There’s lots of reasons why this happen, including your copy sounding spammy (free free free! Save up to 95%! Limited time offer!!!), bad linking, an untrusted IP address and way too many images. Before you send, test your email to a few accounts on Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. Does it get through all of them? Great. No? Well… go back, and start sanitizing your email. Still not working? Try calling up your IP host, and get yourself white-listed on the popular email services, or asking your subscribers to add your email address to their address books.
8. Eight… ain’t it great? Maybe not so much on increasing your click-throughs, but good to know. Start tracking all your emails. Open rates, click through rates, unsubscribes and bounces. While these stats are not nearly as reliable as they were 5 years ago, they do provide a benchmark to see just how well each of your emails are doing. Keep in mind, that as image blocking continues to become more popular, open rates will go down (as the tracking won’t be on it). Though, if you want to try to spin it… With lower open rates recorded, but the same amount of links clicked, looks like a better click through ratio than before. (And since you’re going to follow steps 1-7, your click through rates will be going up anyways… riiiight?)
9. Its that time / day / month… Emails tend to change in their response, depending on the time of day, day of week, and month of year. Why? Because our interests change. If you email me at 9am on a Monday, I’m probably cleaning out my work inbox, and in a decision-making mode, and don’t have time for this email – Delete. How about 2pm on a Friday? Just finished my lunch, back in the office, counting down to the weekend… I’ve got time to kill, so why not learn more. Theres an easy way to figure all this out – Testing. Split up your list into X amount of random segments (maybe 10?), and trigger them to go off at different times. Maybe every day at 2pm to start… Then one day every hour from 9am to 8pm. Track it all, and put 2 and 2 together, and find your ideal launch time.
10. Know where I’m looking.. and be there. When opening in Outlook, with vertical panes, I’ll see the top left give or take. In hotmail, I just see the top few inches, before I have to scroll. By keeping the most important information over to the top left, your readers are more likely to see the important messages, and not just a pretty little picture. Even better… Add a quick links menu in that location, so I know the different sections of the email as soon as I open! And… even better than that, make them all links with anchor links jumping me down to that section. Now that’s convenience.

While these tips are all pretty straight forward, they’re often overlooked or sacrificed in the name of style. If you’re looking to increase click-through, all of these tactics have been tested, and work. It takes a bit of time, but that extra open or click through percentage is worth it – if 1% more of a list of 5,000 click through, that’s 50 more people. If 0.5% more clicked through on a list of 50,000… well, that’s 2500. Not to shabby for 10 simple ways to increase your email click-through.