Click-through rates are an important metric to review when you’re analysing data from your email sends because it helps you to understand your audience better and indicates what’s working and what’s not when you’re trying to engage and reach your target audience. This has become increasingly important recently considering Apple changing their privacy settings on their devices in September 2021 which is likely to be affecting 40% of email marketing lists and marketeer’s open rate metrics hugely. To increase your CTR (Click Through Rate) the first thing to be aware of is your baseline CTR so that you can monitor if what you’re doing is increasing it.

Number of links

Limit the number of links to a maximum of 12 including footer links. Less than 12 links in an email can reduce the number of emails that are identified as SPAM by some email clients.

With the exception of E-News, choose one link to use in your email rather than using lots of different ones sending the audience to different pages.

Vary your format of links

to keep your audience engaged Example places: in sentences and bullet points, behind an image or colourful button.

Test your call-to-action language

Think about alternative ways to communicate to the audience rather than asking for a signature or donation, feedback on how they have helped reach a target for a campaign, thank them for their action, and involve them in different forms of fundraising like a bake sale, raffle etc.

Alternate button formatting

A/B test placing buttons at different points within your email and use a variety of phrases on the buttons, for example, learn more, help now. Each button could correspond to a different part of the page you’re linking to.

Create effective Call to Action (CTA) buttons

Make your CTAs visible at first glance by the reader by placing them above the fold in the email. This is the line that supporters see without scrolling.

Keep the wording of CTAs short and make sure they stand out visually compared to the rest of your email. Clear simple CTA button titles have higher conversion rates compared to creative button titles.

Create a sense of urgency to push the reader to take action around the button like ‘Receive our vegetarian and vegan recipe guide free when you sign up for our newsletter'

In appeal and action-type emails, use the header and footer buttons. CIWF testing has shown that including a header button will improve the conversion rate for our emails.

Experiment with visual content and shortening emails

A/B test to see what your audience engages with most whether it’s images, GIFS, short copy, less or more buttons.

For E-News CIWF testing has shown that a short introduction paragraph leads to a higher conversion rate over a longer introduction summarising all the content of the email.

Keep content fresh using different ideas. Examples could be:

Downloadable freebies e.g. plant-based recipes

Share a video

Surveys

A quiz

Vote or poll

Make sure brand guidelines are adhered to in all email templates and that the brand voice can be easily recognised by your subscribers.

Use effective email preheader/ preview text

(the copy that appears in a supporter’s inbox right after the subject line) 

Provide key details. The subject line can only be so long to show in someone’s email inbox the preview text gives you more room for a complimentary message/ detail. The preview line should give an incentive to open the email beyond the subject line.

Elaborate or expand on the subject line for emails like newsletters that touch on multiple subjects. In the below example which is an internal staff newsletter you find out that the new CEO is at an upcoming event and the preview text gives useful information on a different topic:
Subject line: “The cruel UK-Australia trade deal to be ratified soon” Preview text: “Plus how to use the new HR software”

Include an incentive. This is the opposite to the top example, you are withholding the key details to make it more desirable to open the email on the basis of needing to know. Example below: Subject line: Philip Lymbery launches “Sixty Harvests Left” Preview text: Interested in 25% off?

Personalise the preview text with the supporter’s name.

Use emojis to draw attention to your email among thousands of others in an inbox. It can be effective when used well but should not to be used in every email. A maximum of two emojis should be used in order for it not to effect emails potentially going into spam. This guide is useful for if you are using Engaging Networks.

Add social media buttons to your emails

Follow social media buttons

There are social follow buttons in the footer of emails and we also have ready social follow blocks available to drag and drop in Dot Digital or add in Engaging Networks when more prominence is wanted, for example, in a welcome type email.

Social share buttons

Unless the specific goal of the email is to drive people to social pages, social media buttons should be a secondary action for supporters to take. Not all supporters will know what action you’re asking them to take when they see the social icon so make sure you make it clear exactly what you want them to do. Providing an incentive, like a food guide, or something else to give subscribers a reason to share and connect will help with engagement and following.

Optimise your send times

Sending emails out on targeted days/times when your audience typically responds well will result in improved CTR. Use our email send time data and filter by country, day of the week and time of day to work out the best send times for your emails.

Keep you contact list clean

By regularly keeping your contact list up to date by removing people who are not responding to your emails from your main broadcast contact list, will help ensure a good domain reputation and improve your CTR.

CRM team usually performs a big database cleanup once a year. You can also help by segmenting out your unengaged audience by excluding Score 11 people in Engaging Networks. For Dot Digital users, add an exclusion to the send segment based on no opens and or no clicks for any campaign email over a period of time (6/9/12 months). 

Set up a special program to try to re-engage this audience before sending them a final goodbye email and removing them permanently from your database. Contact the Digital Team for re-engagement program assistance and permanently removing unengaged contacts.

How to avoid your email going to SPAM or Junk

In addition to keeping your contact list clean and maintaining a good sender reputation, this is a list of typical things that are considered flags for spam by email clients:

• Using 'Hot Words', capital letters, and punctuation in subject lines, especially exclamation marks
• Using 'Hot Words' in the body content
• Using a large number of links throughout an email
• An uneven ratio of text and images in the email
• Using 'Friend' as an alternative to addressing the subscriber's name if we don't have their name (Spam Assassin doesn't like this)
• Images missing alt text

Avoiding doing the things listed above will help your emails stay out of SPAM boxes. While there are a number of factors as to why this can happen. The list above is not an exhaustive list, nor is it a guarantee, but it should help.

Test your email and check your potential SPAM score in MailTester.