You’ve been sending out an email newsletter for quite some time, it’s jam packed with products and services or information you think your recipients will love. But your newsletter subscribers are not visiting your website…why is that?
It could be that people aren’t clicking the links to your site, or maybe they’re just not opening your emails. Both problems can be fixed, once you work out why your subscribers are not falling over themselves to read your newsletter and clicking accordingly.
Monitoring your open and click-through rates will help you determine the cause of the problem. Here are some suggestions to help improve both and get the most out of your emails.
Open Rate
The first thing you need to look at to improve the performance of your email campaigns is open rate. This is simply the number of people who open your email after receiving it. This is the most important metric to monitor because in order for people to see all the amazing content and products you are sharing, they actually need to open your email.
According to a recent study by The Radicati Group, 182.9 billion emails are sent worldwide per day. Now that’s a lot of mail. It can be quite easy for your message to get lost in the clutter and remain unopened. To avoid ending up in the trash can, you need to make sure your email stands out from the rest. Below are some things to consider:
1. Subject line
The subject line is the first thing seen by your audience. Most people will only give this a quick glance, so you need to keep your subject lines short but descriptive. You want to pique the interest of the subscriber in 50 characters or less. Also, avoid words like free, reminder and help as these actually have a negative effect on open rates. A/B testing your subject line is a great way to determine the kind of titles that work for your audience. Particular words or phrases may work better than others, so get testing!
2. Time sent
You could be sending your emails too early in the morning, or too late at night, which means that when your subscriber checks their inbox, your message is so far down the list it gets missed. Finding the right time to click ‘send’ will take a bit of experimentation but the key is to think of your audience. If you have a lot of business email addresses, then sending your email out just before they get to work might provide the best results, as it will be at the top of their list when they check their messages. Remember that sending your email at 8am EST means that people in London will receive it at 9pm. If you have a lot of international subscribers, it might be worth emailing them in the morning, their time, to increase your open rate.
3. Reactivation campaign
Sleeping subscribers who refuse to open your emails are not doing your business any good. The goal of a reactivation campaign is to get your subscribers interested in your brand again. Common messages in reactivation campaigns offer special discounts and promotions, notify them when their subscription is ending and provide them with the opportunity to opt-out, or refer them to other communication channels such as social media. Whichever method you decide on, you need to make sure your subject line is compelling. These people haven’t opened your emails in a while so you need to give them a very good reason to open this one.
4. If all else fails it might just be time to cut the dead weight.
If, after your amazing reactivation campaign, people still aren’t clicking, it could mean they’re just not that into you. It might be time to take them off your subscriber list and focus your time and money on those actually interested in your company.
Click-Through Rate
So you’ve nailed open rates, congrats! Now you need to look at your click-through rate. This is the total number of clicks from your email to other pages such as your website, product pages or blog posts. If people are opening your email but not clicking any links, you many just need to tweak the content or layout a little bit. A few things to keep in mind:
1. Be relevant
Your content may no longer be relevant to a majority of your subscribers. Are you a shoe store sending out newsletters about six inch heels to older women in the market for some orthopedic sandals? Take the time to understand and keep track of your audience, and segment your email list, so subscribers only receive information that is useful to them and will make them want to spend money with you.
2. Change your content
Maybe you are just trying to fit too much information in the one email. Overloading your customers with information, and offering multiple calls to action can confuse your reader, and they may choose to delete your message instead of clicking on to your site. Try to have one main goal for each email, whether it be to contact you, view a product or read a blog post, and leave it at that. It may seem too simple, but when it comes to information, especially if you are selling something, less is more.
3. Responsive design
More and more people are using their mobile devices to surf the net and check their emails. In order for people to click links, they need to be able to view your message properly. Create your email with responsive templates which will adjust your newsletter to the size of their screen, whether it be a mobile phone, tablet or desktop computer. Remember that with mobile devices, people are using their fingertips to click instead of a mouse, so make sure your call to action tabs are large enough so that even big fingers can click-through.
Conclusion
There is no sure-fire way to increase your open and click-through rates overnight. It probably took you a while to build a decent sized subscriber list, making sure they remain interested in your brand and engaged with you will require just as much effort. These suggestions are a good starting point and should get you well on your way to having an e-newsletter which is open, read and responded to.
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