How to Boost Email Click-Through Rates (CTR)

Few metrics hold as much weight in email marketing as click-through rate (CTR). Defined as the percentage of recipients who click at least one link in the email, it goes hand-in-hand with the effectiveness of an email campaign. If subscribers are receiving your emails but not clicking on the links, you won’t be generating many sales/conversions.

So, how can you increase the CTR of your marketing emails?

Make Links Visible and Easy to See

Let’s first start with the basics: make your links easy to spot. If they blend into the background of the email, visitors may unknowingly pass by them without clicking. This is why most seasoned marketers recommended using a contrasting color scheme in which your link or call-to-action (CTA) features a color that contrasts with the background. A red link on a white background, for instance, is an excellent idea, as it grabs the reader’s attention. Creating buttons instead of links has also been shown to increase the CTR.

Tell Subscribers to Click!

When crafting the copy for your marketing emails, be sure to tell subscribers how to do an action. Whether it’s clicking on a link mentioned in the body or clicking the large CTA button at the top, you should guide subscribers through the conversion process. Granted, most people already know to click links, but telling them will almost certainly have a positive impact on your click-through-rates.

Use Multiple Call-to-Actions

Who says marketing emails should only have a single call-to-action? You might be surprised to learn that including two or even three CTAs in your marketing emails can boost CTRs by as much as 20%. Feel free to experiment with different quantities and placements for your CTAs, conducting regular A/B split tests to see what works and what doesn’t. After allowing two or more email variants to run, you can ditch the losing email design and replace it with a new one.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Ever notice an email in your inbox with a time-sensitive offer like “Get 30% off if you order by Saturday!”? Sure you have. This is an all-too-common, and effective, tactic used by email marketers. By creating a sense of urgency, it encourages the subscriber to take immediate action without “thinking about it.” You can follow a similar strategy with your email marketing campaigns, using time-sensitive offers to boost CTR and ultimately score more sales/conversions.

Personalize Your Emails

Rather than blasting all of your subscribers with the same generic email, try personalizing your emails so they are more meaningful and relevant to the recipient. Assuming you have subscribers’ names, for instance, you can greet them by name. Seeing their name in the email will trigger a visceral reaction in which they are more likely to click on links. If they made a previous purchase, you can mention it in the email.

Have any other tips for boosting email click-through rates that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!