14 Guaranteed Ways to Improve Email Click-Through Rate

These days people’s attention span is decreasing and it has become increasingly challenging for email marketers to convince them. Hence, businesses are failing to achieve a good email click-through rate and losing conversion opportunities. 

A high email CTR means-

• Higher engagement to your website
• Greater chances of conversions and
• Improved ROI

So it’s important to master the techniques of improving email CTR and overcome the impediments of running a successful email campaign. In this article, we’ll share some effective ways of boosting email CTR that will help you improve your current email marketing efforts and ROI.

Let’s start!

What is the Email Click-through Rate?

Email click-through rate measures the percentage of people who have clicked on one or more links in your email after opening it. It’s an important email marketing KPI to analyze the effectiveness of your email campaign.

A higher CTR indicates your emails are compelling and engaging and people are interested in your messages. So achieving a good CTR should be your primary focus while running an email campaign.

Now, it’s important to know how to calculate email CTR. To calculate your email CTR you need to know two things-

• The number of recipients who clicked on a link and
• The number of recipients who opened your email

Next, follow the following email click-through rate formula to calculate your CTR:

It’ll help you to compute the CTR successfully without any flaws.

Learn about the difference between click rate and click-through rate

What is a Good Email Click-through Rate?

If you want to evaluate your current email marketing efforts then you need to compare it with an established benchmark. In the case of email CTR, it’s tough to say what’s a good CTR because the answer isn’t one-size-fits-all.

The CTR benchmark may vary by industry, target audience, and email campaign. So it’s important to identify these things first to proceed further. The average CTR falls within the range of 2% to 5% for any industry. However, it’s important to know the specific industry average to appraise your past and current efforts and determine what’s a good CTR for your business.

Key Factors Affecting Email Click-through Rate

It’s important to know about the factors that impact the click-through rate so that you can consider them carefully before proceeding to your next email campaign. Several factors significantly influence your email click-through rate and understanding them is crucial to improving your current email marketing efforts. Let’s check them out:

• Subject line: The subject line is the first thing your recipients will notice when your emails reach them. If your subject line isn’t compelling, engaging, and personalized then there is very little chance people will open your email.
• Content quality: Your email content is the next thing a reader is going to notice after opening the email. If your content isn’t interactive, engaging, and relevant then it’s harder to convert people.
• Email design: Who’ll ignore an email that is aesthetically pleasing and mind-blowing? A visually appealing and mobile-responsive email can tweak the reader’s mind & set the climax.
• Personalized email: People tend to focus more on emails that provide a personalized experience. So email personalization is another factor to consider to boost engagement.
• Timing: Everything has perfect timing, and so does when to knock on the recipient’s inbox. So it’s important to identify the optimal time when your recipients will most likely engage with your emails.
• Email frequency: Email frequency is another important factor to consider while sending emails. Sending too many emails won’t turn your subscribers into customers. Instead, this practice might prove annoying and they’ll unsubscribe from you, killing your reputation. 
• Call to action: Most email marketers focus on the subject line or email body and give less focus on CTA. This makes your recipients confused as they don’t know what exactly they need to do.

14 Ways to Boost Your Email Click-through Rate

We know it’s difficult to convince people to open your email to take action and making conversions has always been a headache for every email marketer. But don’t worry —improving your email CTR isn’t a guessing game. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered with some sure-fire ways that can help you improve your email CTR and achieve much better success than previous attempts.

Let’s explore each of them to boost the CTR of your next email campaign!

Define Your Goal

If you have a clear goal on a mission then it’s not mission impossible anymore! There’s always a goal behind every task and the same goes for your transactional or marketing emails. So, a must thing you need to ask yourself before starting any email campaign is—

“What do I want to achieve?”

Once you define the purpose of your campaign, it’ll become easier for you to set the plan to achieve your target by sending people a loud and clear message.

Identify the Perfect Time

Don’t just send emails, deliver them when they will make the most impact. You can send your emails anytime but it’s important to understand when your recipients will respond to your call. If you send your emails at late night or at inconvenient times, there is little chance your CTR will improve. It’s not just about writing your email copy and hitting the send button, it’s also important to determine the time when your audience is most receptive.

So what’s the perfect timing?

Well, the answer isn’t one-size-fits-all since the timing will vary on factors such as industry, target audience, and time zone.

However, you can get some ideas from HubSpot’s research:

• Marketing emails work better from 9 AM to 12 PM and 12 PM to 3 PM
• Tuesday, Monday, and Thursday have high engagement
• B2B emails perform better when sent between 9 AM and 12 PM
• B2C emails receive higher engagement between 9 AM and 12 PM

Craft Irresistible Subject Lines

The subject line is your email’s first impression, and a good one will determine whether your message is opened or ignored. Since it’s the gatekeeper of your message you have to come up with something that entices people to open your email.

The significance of a great email subject line is high because you aren’t just writing a few words, you are setting the initial spark that will drive your recipients in the email body. So, if you don’t write an engaging subject line, your emails will join the ignored list and spoil your email sender reputation.

Don’t worry!

Here are some tips you can follow to create effective subject lines:

• Keep your subject line brief and don’t exceed 50 characters
• Make it compelling, emotional, and personalized
• Use power words and FOMO to create a sense of urgency
• Ask questions in the subject line to make your email interactive 
• Don’t forget to A/B test your subject lines to determine the better version

Segment Your Audience

If you are sending the same email to the whole list —you need to stop!

Email marketing isn’t all about sending messages, it’s about sending the right message to the right person. So email marketing without segmentation is like trying to hit a bullseye blindfolded.

Employ Market segmentation techniques to understand your target audience and personalize your messages to increase engagement. When people receive emails that offer a personalized experience, they’ll show more interest!

Offer Personalized Experience

Why do personalized emails matter?

Because you need to offer specific experiences to your audience. Personalization is important to ensure a tailored experience for your target audience. If you want to make an impression in the crowded inbox of your recipient then personalization is the key.

When people receive their favorite product recommendations, discount offers, or abandoned cart emails they’ll most likely engage with them and convert. It’s because a personalized email addresses the specific needs and pain points of the prospects and delivers the exact value they are looking for.

Follow these personalization techniques to boost your email’s impact!

Keep Your Message Straightforward

People tend to scan an article or email before reading it. So if your email is wordy or too long then your audience will lose attention. Therefore, your message should be straightforward and tell what value you are providing to your audience in exchange for their time. Also, most people read their emails on mobile phones so you should stick with the less is more policy.

Make Emails Conversational

You are writing emails to build a connection with your subscribers. So infusing a conversational tone in your emails will make your messages feel more personal & engaging. When you make your emails conversational, you take an approach to being friendly with your readers. This approach breaks the communication barrier and creates an environment of direct communication.

When your recipients open your email they will feel like someone is talking to them and it’ll help you to connect with them on a deeper level. Follow the following strategies to write a conversational email:

• Start the email by mentioning your recipient’s name
• Write as if you are talking to your recipient
• Don’t use complex or fancy words
• Keep your message concise
• Ask questions to keep your readers engaged

Ensure Mobile Optimization

At present, most of the people love to read their emails on their smartphones. So ensuring a mobile responsive email design is a necessity for reaching and engaging your target audience. If you fail to deliver mobile-friendly emails then it’ll hamper the user experience of your recipients because they will appear messy, incomplete, or hard to navigate. All these inconveniences may result in unsubscribing you or placing your emails in the trash folder.

Follow the following tips to ensure a mobile-responsive email:

• Design mobile-friendly emails that fit all devices 
• Keep your subject line and preview text concise
• Try to keep your message concise and to the point
• Ensure enough spacing between clickable elements
• Test your emails on mobile devices before sending
• Use analytics to optimize emails for the mobile user base 

Design Visually Appealing Emails

As humans, we love attractive things and when you open a beautiful email in your inbox it’s hard to ignore. A well-designed email with an aesthetic image can resonate with the viewer and drive results. How?

Images capture our attention faster and deliver the message in seconds so a strong and compelling visual can act as stimuli and boost engagement. For example, if you are running any product launch email campaign then a picture of your upcoming product will perform better than a text-based announcement.

Therefore, you should always follow the latest email design trends and design relevant images that instantly deliver the message. Also, you have to be careful with using images since too many images can affect email deliverability.

Evoke Urgency with FOMO

FOMO acts as a psychological trigger that compels action, urging recipients to engage before they miss out on an opportunity. Creating a sense of urgency with words like “limited stock”, “ends today”, ”now or never”, etc. can work dramatically for you to boost conversion in any email campaign. 

This tactic works as an irresistible magnet and your recipients won’t want to miss out on limited-time offers and exclusive deals. You can use FOMO in the following ways to engage recipients with your email and improve conversion:

• Create tension with a countdown timer
• Introduce scarcity with limited stock
• Run flash sales campaigns with limited time
• Send a “Last Chance” email as a final reminder

Integrate Social Proof

When you scroll on an online shopping platform you check reviews and ratings to ensure quality, trustworthiness, and suitability. Likewise, social proof in an email builds trust and credibility toward a product or business and reassures the recipients they can trust the business.

So it’s important to include social proof in your emails to build trust in the recipient’s mind and reassure them that they’re making the right decision by choosing your business.

You can use social proof in the following ways to amplify your brand reputation:

• Showcase customer testimonials 
• Use numbers to reveal your product’s popularity
• Display ratings & awards to prove credibility
• Showcase real product reviews 
• Include press mentions if you have any

Inject Powerful CTA 

You are sending emails to your recipients to take specific action, right? Then a clear and actionable call-to-action is your ultimate weapon to win their clicks.

A compelling and persuasive CTA is an important part of your email body that prompts subscribers to act on your message. Therefore you should place your CTA in such a fashion that your recipients can understand what exactly they need to do.

You can follow the following tweaks to ensure the best CTA practice- 

• Stick with one primary CTA in your email
• Use text links for secondary CTAs
• Use actionable words in your CTA
• Write personalized CTA for readers
• Don’t use too many CTA in your email
• Design attractive & interactive CTA buttons with hyperlinks
• Keep your CTA near the top of your email

Incorporate Video

Using videos in your emails can sometimes work as a magnetic pull that entices readers to click, watch, and finally become brand advocates.

When you add a video inside the email body it makes your message more engaging and interactive, capturing the audience’s attention and encouraging them to take action. Also, using GIFs in your emails can be effective and help to improve click-through rate. But if embedding videos in every email turns out your favorite habit then it’ll affect your email deliverability. It’s a matter of understanding which campaign requires focus on videos and to what extent. 

Anything Missing?

Segmentation, personalization, email frequency, timing —we can talk about all the stuff the whole day but it’s important to ask ourselves – “Did we miss something?”

If you’ve guessed it right, you know that all the strategies mentioned above are meaningless if you aren’t using a reliable email automation tool.

Email automation tool is the heartbeat of modern-day email marketing and to engage, nurture, and convert your leads using the aforementioned strategies it’s a must. FluentCRM can help you implement all the strategies we discussed earlier and improve your email campaign’s CTR with high conversion and ROI.

Don’t believe us? Then give it a shot first!

Skyrocket your next campaign!

The success of your email campaigns greatly depends on the response of your audience to your call. So boosting your email click-through rate is important to achieve better results and build stronger relationships with your subscribers.

Remember improving your email CTR is a continuous process and you need to experiment with all the strategies we mentioned earlier. We believe you’ll notice a significant improvement in your next email campaign and your subscribers will turn into paying customers.

Best of luck!