Email marketing is a great way of connecting with all the people that are important to your business – customers, prospects, etc. However, it can be really tricky when it comes to actually achieving certain results.
Even though some say that email marketing is dead, let us give you one reason why most of the marketers still stick to it. Email marketing has a potential ROI of up to 4400%. This still makes it the best way to attract and retain users.
Which is more, we’ve already reached some impressive numbers in CTR and email deliverability on some of our recent projects. We’ve actually used Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) for this purpose and it has proven quite the fit. Will go into some more details just below.
Here are a few tactics which are easy to implement but still very effective for achieving the maximum CTR from your email campaigns:
Make sure your email gets right to its destination
Email services provided by companies like Google or AOL monitor your actions as an email sender. So, basically they decide whether your email will be delivered or will end up in the spam or junk box. They do this by tracking your IP address & your past behavior – whether you’ve sent spammy irrelevant content, have sent emails to people who are not subscribed to your list, have sent massive amounts of emails in a very short timeframe, or simply have been marked as spam by many people.
Taking that into consideration, you have to decide if you need a shared IP or a dedicated IP address. According to a case study by MarketinShepra, a tire corporation with many online brands called TBC, increased its deliverability from 60% to 99%. What they did is not put their reputation into the hands of other companies and marketers, but instead they got a dedicated IP address.
Mind that if you decide to go this way, you have to be familiar with all the practices with IP warming, because you don’t want to drive your reputation into the ground. On the other hand, if you only have a few thousand subscribers, a dedicated IP is not necessary.
Speaking of deliverability, we had a similar challenge for one of our clients from the food industry as we were evolving their engagement strategy. We needed to get ahold of an email delivery provider that would be flexible and scalable to support the thousands of subscribers our client had. So, we decided to use Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to meet those needs and we haven’t looked back since.
We chose Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) because of its global reach and excellent deliverability rates. We mentioned just above that a dedicated API is crucial for increasing the email deliverability rate. So, with the combination of the SES dedicated AP and our well-crafted strategies, we were able to increase the inbox placement, therefore increasing the overall CTR.
Make sure you clean your email list regularly
Before sending any emails, you have to clean your lists, meaning separate the active from inactive or existing users. One condition on which the list can be separated is to divide it on users that have taken some action (opened or clicked an email) in the last six months and those that haven’t.
The reason for doing this is that you don’t want the poor engagement of inactive users to harm the reputation of your overall campaign.
After you separate the two lists, the deliverability process continues with the active list as usual. But, you must not forget the latter – the list of inactive subscribers. What you should do is cut the frequency of delivering. If you send an email every 2 weeks, drop down to one email every 4 weeks. After you start sending emails, make sure you clean the hard bounces out of the list. Another thing you can do is allows inactive subscribers to change their email preferences. It’s very important to have clear CTAs in your emails, especially in re-engagement emails. The simple reason for this is that you want to know who is still interested and who is not.
Make sure your email headline is eye-catchy (to make them open the email)
Headlines are the first thing subscribers see when you deliver the email. If you fail there, all the effort goes unnoticed. A good strategy is to test up to five headlines per campaign on specific test groups of subscribers. When you have the winner in the end (the email headline with the highest open rate), send it to the rest of your list.
Even though discounts work well for people, they also raise the frustration hence the complaint rates. Try to be more subtle and provide value with the headline. You can send your latest newsletter or a sample of it with promotions built in it. However, give people a reason to stick around and decide to open and engage with the email.
Make sure you keep your users’ attention and increase the CTA with interactive emails
Once subscribers open your email, your last but not least task would be to hold their attention and make them click your CTA. The thing that will help you achieve that is your email content. Few things you can do to make your content more effective:
- Use interactive content such as GIFs, videos, etc. According to a report by Litmus, the best way is to experiment with personalization, live & dynamic content, or even gamification.
- Use images. It’s in people’s nature to be more responsive to visuals. Therefore, using images increases your click rate right from the beginning.
- Ask for feedback. If you are running a survey or a poll, offering people something in return will make them take part almost every time.
- Use data and numbers. This kind of information works very well for increasing people’s interest for more information.
- Use social sharing buttons. These buttons are also clicks, so make sure you take advantage of it.
Conclusion
Having said all of the above, we have to underline that each company and each brand have different marketing strategies thus different email marketing goals.
So, the next time you send out an email campaign, try to apply some of the tips we’ve shared. If that happens to work for you, don’t stop there. Continue with the rest and see a significant improvement with your click-through rates.
If you need support with boosting your email click-through rate or defining the tactics to execute it, such as the Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), do not hesitate to contact Alite International.
We have been working with multiple large organizations in supporting their move towards full marketing automation. Send us an email on info@alite-international.com.
