Five Tips to Get your Emails Opened, Read and Clicked
While sending emails is easy, cutting through the daily clutter of messages your clients and prospects receive is not. Now that more online activity is done on handheld devices than on desktop computers, email campaigns should be mobile-centric to ensure that they have as much impact on small screens as on full-size monitors.
To increase your open rates, better engage with mobile audiences and improve website traffic, consider using the following tips in your next email initiative.
Upfront call-to-action
Create mobile-friendly emails by inverting the sequence of traditional email content flow. Begin the email with a call-to-action, how they will benefit from it, and how they should do it. Placing the call-to-action in the first line or two of your email to prevent readers from missing it.
Tip: A/B testing is a great way to see which of your calls-to-action resonates best with your readers. Split your list and test each call-to-action, and use the one with the most hits for your future sends.
Mobile-friendly emails
Test your text on a mobile device and optimize it for a cell phone size screen. Format long lines into brief bullet points. Break up paragraphs so they are short and concise. If you are using images avoid making important text part of it or your message may go unread if images are slow to render or trigger spam filters. Many email servers block images so avoiding them all together will increase your chances of even getting through.
Tip: Like most online content, allowing your readers to “skim” your email content and easily locate what interests them applies to email messages as well. Use bold, underlines, and italics sparingly, to amplify your message.
Accentuate links
When using links, use the shortened version when possible and make it easy to see and click on by using larger text and bolding it. If more than one link is provided, space them far enough apart so they don’t look like one big link, or avoiding users from clicking the wrong link. To play it safe, have the person with the biggest hands in your office test to see if they could click the links individually.
Tip: Many email platforms will create shortened links for you, and although links are important to prompt action and website traffic, overuse of links can look spammy and decrease your email response.
Use click-to-call links
Add a click-to-call link to all the phone numbers in your email text or signature line so that Smartphone users don’t need to remember or write down the number to dial it on their keypad.
Tip: You can track any click-to-call events using Google Analytics.
Mobile-friendly landing pages
When users land on a webpage from a mobile link, make sure that the landing page is not only technically user-friendly but so is the content. Minimize the information collected to the bare essentials to increase conversion rates.
Tip: Your landing page should relate directly to the link that accesses it to increase conversion potential. Content on the page should support the “why” that drove your visitor to click in the first place.
Email marketing can help increase revenues by building relationships, cross-selling, and continuing a conversation with a prospect you met online or in person – but only if they are opened and read. To help improve your email visibility and value, use the five points above as a checklist before hitting send.