Three quick wins to increase click-through rates for Email Marketing designers

No matter how robust and high-performing your email design templates are, we all see click-through rates drop off from time to time. Sometimes this happens when an email template is being used beyond maturity. Prospects become so accustom to your layout, that they begin to switch off. Sometimes it’s just because the proposition/offer you’re promoting isn’t strong enough to convince the masses to click, and there’s nothing you or I can do to improve that. But if your stats start to slide, email marketing designers can do a lot to keep those click-through and conversion rates up. Here are a few pointers:

Check that your main proposition is “above the fold”

If your main offer ends more than 250 pixels down the page, this is the first thing you should look to change. You should be aiming to get the header and main proposition in at this height, including your call to action. If you’re already achieving this, then make sure that any banners in this area are built in html, so text and images are separate. This ensures that your main offer appears in text, so that users that are blocking images by default still get to see your main offer.

Review your calls to action

Take a look at all of the links and buttons that you include in your email. You should only ever have one way of linking with text, and a maximum of two types of button. If you have any more than this, users will find it difficult to quickly understand what is clickable, and you’ll lose a lot of clicks. It also helps you pick up extra clicks where prospects very casually gaze over your email and click through, because they don’t have to think about where to click – it’s should be so plain obvious that it’s almost subconscious. Another good test is to gaze at your email creative onscreen so that it looks blurry, and if you can’t immediately identify where to click, fix this and your click-through rates will jump.

Challenge editorial copy and links

I think we all know that as carefully crafted your emails may be, they’re rarely read with the same passion and enthusiasm as you. Most prospects will skim-read and fast scroll, and if they don’t see something engaging in 7 seconds, they’ll go and do something else. That’s why it’s important to make sure that when you get your copy from the editorial or marketing team, you don’t just plonk it into the email. Read it and make sure that everything that you’ve been asked to make a link, is information-rich. The old classic click here isn’t good enough these days. When you skim-read a commercial email, i doubt you’re going to be tempted be click here. For example, let’s say we’re a clothing company, with a great offer to push on all t-shirts, and you are asked to write: “…and for this week only, we’ve got 10% off of all t-shirts“. If you make a slight change to the copy and extend the link, you can make this much stronger, e.g. “…and for this week only, get 10% off of all t-shirts“. In isolation, this seems very obvious, but things like this do get forgotten about when you’re trying to get a campaign out there quickly. A little bit of time goes a long way.

To conclude

If you are responsible for email design and html, it is your responsiblity to make sure that user experience and accessiblity are properly considered, and this does include copy. It’s in your best interest, because you’re likely to be in some way accountable for click-through rates. If you follow the tips about calls to action and hero offer promotion, it will pay off. Let me know how you get on!

Tags: email calls to action, email design, email editorial, Email Marketing, usability