When you email your customer databases, your optimum result is likely to be a 100% open and click-through rate. You want every person you email to open the email, and then click through to your website – of course you do! This would show you that your email marketing content is doing the best possible job of engaging your audience.
Unfortunately, the reality is that you’re never going to convince every single person to open your email, let alone click through to your website. Your database will naturally contain duplicate email addresses, old and disused addresses, and contact details for people who have simply lost interest. On top of this, even those who DO wish to hear from you will not always have the time to open and read your email.
However there are ways to ensure you keep your open and click-through rates as high as possible, and the possibility of conversions high too!
Follow these steps to boost your email marketing performance
- First of all, just take stock. Examine your data from the past twelve months of email campaigns; what are your average open rates & click-through rates, and how do they compare to those of your industry more generally? Is there room for improvement?
- Compare your highest performing campaigns with your lowest performing campaigns, and see if there are any notable differences between them that might account for this difference in open and click through rates. This might be the type of content used (image, video, text only), it could be the style of delivery (question, statement, exclamation marks), or many other factors (content layout, type of offer, use of emojis). Make a note of the key qualities of your highest and lowest performing campaigns, for you to refer back to for your new campaigns.
- Now go back over all of your campaigns in more detail and review your previous subject lines and preview text (these are the parts that people have seen when they first noticed your email waiting in their inbox). For each campaign, consider: Did the text encourage an open? Was it tempting enough? Would you have opened it, had you found it waiting in your inbox?
- Review the content of your previous emails, and try to look at it with an objective eye. Have you used the right amount of text? Has the text itself been persuasive – did it encourage the viewer to want to find out more? What topics have you covered, and what types of content have you used – do you see any patterns? Have your images been of a high quality and relevance?
- Review the regularity and timing of your emails; in months when you sent more emails, did the open rate and click-through rate increase, or decrease? Did you get a better response sending later in the day than earlier? Did weekend mail outs perform better or worse than those sent midweek?
- Using the above analysis of your previous campaigns, start experimenting with different content types and styles. One of the most effective ways to do this is by split-testing your content.
- Cleanse your database – remove any duplicate addresses, redundant/inactive addresses, and recipients who simply haven’t opened any campaigns for a long time.
- Reengage your email marketing database with a competition or special offer; not only will you very likely enjoy a bumper open and click-through rate for this email, but it should also improve the success of your next campaigns too, as people begin to associate your brand with exciting content.
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