What Makes an Email “Clickable”?

What is an email without a click? Effective email writing is a tricky job, especially when email audiences are constantly shifting, and trends evolve faster than you can type. Many businesses, large and small, rely on email marketing to reach their audience and grow their business. It is one of the best ways to broadcast your message to the right audience. 

Unfortunately, every business believes this, making the email marketing arena pretty crowded. If your email click rate is less than ideal, or if you are struggling to reach your desired audience in a way that is relatable, relevant and still professional, an email marketing refresh may be necessary. 

Effective email writing and improving your email click rates is attainable, and audiences desire hearing from their favorite brands. It just takes a little practice and advice from an email marketing agency. 

Include a Catchy Subject and Preheader

In order to boost your email click rate, you need to get people to open your email. The first thing your audience will see when you send an email is the subject, followed by the email preview (or preheader). Nailing these is essential to getting clicks. It is also the hardest part (go figure). 

There are three primary ways to improve your email’s subject and preheader and capture your audience’s attention: 

• Add Emojis

Market disruption means doing what others aren’t, and what audiences aren’t used to. Adding strategic emojis to your email subjects or preheaders will capture a reader’s attention quickly. Don’t overdo it — we suggest only using one emoji in your subject or preheader, but not in both. Trends are leaning toward emojis in the preheaders, as it may cause a reader to want to click. Experiment with using an emoji purposefully in your subject line to engage with your audience.

• Address Your Audience

“Marketers: Here are 3 ways to improve your emails” is a catchy subject. Why? Because it immediately addresses the target audience. Personalizing your subjects and preheaders will quickly improve your open rate and email click rate just by making it about your audience.

Email personalization integrates names from your email lists and can populate the names into the subject line or within your email. Customizing and personalizing emails based on segmentation is effective and can improve your email open rates and eventual click rates. 

• Make The Subject Clear

Tell your readers what this email is going to be about right away. Leaving them guessing will reduce the amount of opens you get because, well, they don’t know why they’re opening it in the first place! Clear subjects and headlines tell your readers what they will get out of this email, and then the rest of the email fills in the details.

Optimize Your Email for Mobile

It’s a fact of life: people are on their phones constantly. Sure, laptops and desktops are still a thing, but they aren’t the main thing. That means in order to have effective email writing down, you need to be writing for a mobile audience. Focus on how your emails will look and read on a small screen, not a big monitor. Make your copy short and clear, and add visual elements as well. 

With a mobile-first approach, your email click rates will skyrocket, as you will be reaching your audience where they are, not where you want them to be. 

Add Clear, Visible CTAs

The Call to Action (CTA) is what is going to finally give you a click through rate that you want. Add clear, visible CTAs in your email that tells readers where they are going and what they are getting by clicking. Having a CTA “above the fold” is a good way to get readers to click early in the email. Follow up with an interesting CTA after your informative copy and visuals. 

Make CTAs interesting and specific. Try to avoid “Learn More,” as that is generic and used by everyone. Instead, consider adding a CTA that tells readers where they’re going, such as “Shop Shoes,” or “Start Cleaning Better” or something similar. That way, your readers will want to click and you will see more conversions. 

Offer Value

Finally, offer value in your emails. Why should your readers open the email? What will they gain from clicking? Emails without any clear action or value to the reader quickly become irrelevant noise that are ignored, reported as spam or unsubscribed to. 

Make sure each email you send has a clear purpose and value prop. Maybe this is a discount code, industry insights, freebies or more. If you readers find value in what they read, then they are more likely to click through and engage with your business. 

Improve Your Emails All Around

One of the best ways to reach your target market is to create effective email campaigns. Integrating strategy throughout your email marketing efforts is critical to improve email click rate and engage with your audience. 

Working with an email marketing agency can help reach your audience, incorporate effective email writing and improve your email click rate. Bullseye Media is a Minneapolis-based email marketing agency with a digital-first approach to reaching audiences around the world. If you are interested in improving your email marketing strategy, contact us.