As a marketer or a small business owner, your marketing strategy might include relying on the clickthrough rates of the newsletters you send to your customers or prospects. However, the increasing rate of email spam in inboxes has made email marketing very difficult to implement. If your recipients are not clicking your email links, this results in fewer leads and sales, and will negatively affect your bottom line.
According to Mailchimp, the current average click-through rate hovers around 2.5%, which means that most readers aren’t compelled to click on the links in emails, even if they are opening them.
Here are a few tips and strategies to help you create a more effective email marketing campaign.
Avoid Triggering Spam Filters
Spam filters can be activated for a variety of reasons, preventing your email from getting into inboxes. It is critical to use the correct keywords in your subject line: it must be engaging and have the proper length otherwise it will be removed by the spam filter or even deleted by the recipient.
Avoid any trigger words as much as possible to increase your chances of getting to your customers. Subject lines that are aggressively sales-like are more likely to be marked as spam. You need to avoid loud punctuation like all caps and multiple exclamation points, as well as overtly promotional language like “Buy now” or “Free.”
Personalize Your Subject Line
Marketers can no longer get away with one-size-fits-all messaging. Thus, savvy marketers are utilizing personalization strategies in the subject line of the email so that individuals will feel that it is custom-made for them: a Mailchimp study has found that personalization actually increases open rates, while Salesforce has noted that personalized subject lines increase the open rate by 22%. For the most part, the use of first names has had a largely positive impact in several industries, except in the legal industry.
Experian’s Shelley Kessler said that “A brand that recognizes a subscriber by name in the subject line of an email is able to establish an immediate, personal connection with that subscriber and that is reflected in our research.”
You can further refine your subject lines by understanding your audience’s preferences and interests. This would be easier if you make use of a CRM system such as Salesforce or Hubspot. Use data points such as the recipient’s geographic location, job role, last purchase, company name or personal interests.
Try Asking Questions
Draw the attention of your readers by asking a question in your subject line, particularly if the question is relevant to your recipient’s buyer persona. Questions are a great way to focus your reader’s attention and pique his or her curiosity. A higher response rate often results from messaging that engages the reader mentally. Questions like “Are you making these SEO mistakes?” or “Do you know what your website is doing wrong?”, for example, will compel the reader to reflect on the answer and clickthrough your email for validation.
Experiment with Adding Video Content
Adding a video within your newsletter can be a great tool to inform, educate, and develop relationships with your audience. It also allows you to reinforce your branding and show more individuality. Videos can convey emotions and memorable events resulting in greater engagement than text or graphics.
According to Salesforce, research confirms that video email marketing has as much as a 28% higher rate of return compared to traditional emails and more and more marketers are employing this strategy. Try including a video in your next newsletter and see if it motivates your readers to click.
Use a More “Scannable” Format
Choosing the right format can greatly improve the chances your readers will read through the entire content, otherwise they will simply click the back button. A previous study has indicated that people typically scan through a page using an F-pattern. It is recommended that your most important message be written in the first two paragraphs of the newsletter. You should also utilize headings and subheadings. Create your newsletter in such a way that readers can scan them quickly from top to bottom. If your text is long, break it up into sections with subheadings for improved readability. If you are sharing links to several blog posts, avoid writing long descriptions. With newsletter writing, less is more.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
Most people read their email through their cellphone or tablet so you must create a newsletter that is mobile responsive. Non-optimized emails are quickly abandoned. Use tools like Mailchimp that will automatically create responsive templates.
Include Images but Also Use HTML Link Options
Pictures tend to draw the reader’s eye so make sure you include strong visuals that are relevant to your content. Data collected by HubSpot has shown that images are vital in grabbing the reader’s attention.
A word of caution, avoid writing all the pertinent information inside the image since many email providers block images by default. Make sure that there is duplicate text content within the email so that your readers will not miss key messages. When using images or a button image to link to your website, you must also provide another link in other elements of your content such as the title of the articles in your newsletter. This way, even if the images are blocked, your readers still get access to what they want to know more about.
Encourage Social Sharing
Encourage your readers to share the content of your newsletter through Social Share buttons. This can be made more effective if you choose larger icons and place them on the upper part of your newsletter rather than at the very bottom.
To further improve your newsletter’s reach, you can add a line that that suggests your recipients forward the email to their peers. An example is: “If you found our content useful, please share this email with a colleague or coworker who would appreciate it too.”
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