How do you get your contacts to click?
You’ve already sent your email, they’ve opened the message, and they’ve read the content. Now what? Now, is the time where you should see your email marketing working for you. Now is the time, where your readers should move on past the content and into purchasing.

The ultimate goal of your email marketing is to make a sale, get more information from your readers, or maybe sign them up for an event, right? The newsletter is the portal by which your customers make that transition. What you want to do is get your customers to move on past your newsletter and get them to where they can do more. How do we do that? We do that by increasing your click thru rate.

Can you give me some directions?
Let’s say you walk into a stationery shop to get some monogrammed memo pads. You walk in and there are signs pointing every direction, salespeople asking you if you need help every three minutes, and piles of paper and sticky notes everywhere, but not in any particular order. If this were the case, you might know what it feels like for customers who get email marketing messages from businesses that don’t lay out the path for their readers.

Readers have to get to what they want as with as little work on their part as possible. Most readers will scan your messages for things that they deem are important to them. If your newsletter contains a lot of distractions or roadblocks, it might seem like too much effort. If you give your newsletter a flow, it will be much easier to read.

Eliminate the maze by offering a table of contents, giving readers a shortcut.

If you don’t give your contacts something to click, they won’t
When it comes to getting more clicks, a pretty obvious strategy is going to be: Add more links. The more opportunities a reader has to click, the more likely they are to find a link they like and click it.

If you have content that is lengthy, entice them with a couple of paragraphs, then have them click through to read the rest on your website. Another option is to place your links in the beginning of your newsletter, throughout the body, and especially at the end. When your readers want to move onto more information, they can.

Hey you. Yes, YOU! Include a Clear Call to Action
A call to action is a way for you and your readers to get more out of your newsletter. It might be information for them or a sale for you, either way make it powerful. You should always have a clear call to action in your newsletter. Whether that call to action is to “click for more information,” “Sign up for Free,” or “Buy Now and Save,” you must include it.

By “clear call to action” we mean the reader should physically see a call to action button and also understand what the action on the other end is. Links are a thing of the past, buttons reign! Create a simple button that users can click that simply say “click here” or “more information” with a simple sentence above it explaining what they get after the click. What the call to action is going to determine what you should do with your button.

For example:

Instead of:
Our new book is available on amazon.com. Buy it here.

Try:
“Our new book is available on amazon.com!”

By doing this, you’re guiding your readers in a direction that you would like them to take, not just hiding the action within the text. When they get to the button, then it’s their decision whether or not they wish to act. The good news is you’ve made it easier for them to act.

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Tags: Contacts, Distractions, Email Marketing, Maze, Memo Pads, Newsletter, Paragraphs, Piles, Portal, Roadblocks, Salespeople, Signs, Stationery Shop, Sticky Notes, Table Of Contents, Three Minutes, Transition

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Email Marketing Tips;. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.