Tips and Tricks To Improve Your Email Click Rate

  • June 9, 2022

By Adele Boesinger

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So you want to boost your click rate. First things first, ground rules: let’s establish exactly what click rate (or click-through rate) is before we start to look at improving it.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of the number of clicks on a specific link or call to action (CTA), for example the “shop now” button within an email marketing campaign, to the number of times people were exposed to the link (aka the number of impressions). For the mathematicians out there, here it is in equation form: CTR = (click-throughs / impressions) x 100.

For example, if 100 people see a link within your email and five people click to learn more about the product in question, that email campaign has a click rate of 5%.

CTR can be used to measure the success of not just email campaigns but across your CRM space – for example, pay-per-click (PPC), search results (for example with Google AdWords), CTAs on a landing page, or hyperlinks in blog posts.

Why is click rate important?

So, what’s the big deal?

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CTR is an important metric because it helps you understand your customers and their behavior—it tells you what works (and what doesn’t work) when trying to reach your target audience.

Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), marketers have been using click data in combination with open data to understand what is resonating with their audience in email campaigns. A low click rate could indicate that you’re targeting the wrong audience or that you’re not speaking in the language that’s going to convince them to click.

Let’s take the example of an email campaign that directs people to your website, e-commerce store, or landing page. With optimized brand language in the subject line, your contacts have opened the email. The email’s CTR then lets you know how effective the copy is at drawing in potential customers; you can then compare copy, formatting, and CTAs to see which has the highest click rate.

Three tips to improve click rate

There are many factors to consider depending on the digital marketing channel you’re trying to increase click rate on. How you increase CTR depends on where you’re trying to target.

For example, if you have a low click rate on a PPC ad, consider testing your headline and copy. On the other hand, when you’re trying to increase CTR within an email campaign, you need to pay close attention to the CTAs.

Here are three tips to consider when you’re trying to improve click rate:

1. Personalize your content

According to research from SmarterHQ, brand loyalty among millennials improves by 28% when they receive personalized marketing.

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Going beyond first name personalization and using other data to personalize your subject lines and body copy are a great way to engage your contacts across the CRM space. Personalization using dynamic content allows you to vary what content is seen by your audience based on the customer data you hold. Movable Ink is a great example of a platform that turns data into personalized content at scale.

One of my favorite uses of dynamic content is personalizing offers. It allows us to pair the best offer to the right person. This sounds abstract until you consider some examples. One common use case for dynamic targeting is geo-specific offers. An e-commerce brand may ship to various countries, and know that shipping is the primary reason for cart abandonment. Using dynamic content, they can personalize shipping offers based on where their prospect is shopping from.

Image showing offers being sent to different countries.

2. Optimize your CTAs

Call to actions are one of the most basic elements of marketing – yet they’re also the most important to get right if you want to increase email engagement and click rate.

Image showing clicking CTAs

An effective CTA depends on the action you want subscribers to take. By testing diversity in your copy language, you can start to understand more about your audience. A perfect example is P&O Cruises: the cruise line is constantly testing fresh tones, styles, words and phrases against its audience, and has delivered an 18% average click rate uplift as a result.

In addition to wordsmithing your CTAs, don’t forget about design. Buttons and links should stand out and be easy to click – or tap on mobile devices. Try using contrasting or complementary colors for buttons, and think about flow when you place them in the design.

3. Look after formatting

Getting formatting right makes a big difference in whether people engage with your content.

Image showing different devices

For example, make sure your marketing is mobile-friendly. More people read email on mobile devices than desktop computers. And with 95% of all organic searches in the US coming from mobiles, it’s important that your website is mobile optimized too.

It’s also wise to avoid hiding key information in images. Not only is this bad for email accessibility, but if images are slow to load a website or social ad, recipients will miss vital info which could help them decide to click.

Customer behavior is always changing, and what works today in terms of personalization or a CTA may not work next month – so it’s essential that you keep constantly testing and optimizing and adjusting your marketing to your audience to ensure your click rates keep improving.

For more in-depth tips and tricks on how to test your content that gives you meaningful insights, check out our Testing for Success orange paper.

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