Email marketing is challenging.

First, you need to figure out what you want to do with it.

Then you need to get people to open your emails.

And just when you had it worked out, turns out your readers don’t want to do what you ask them to.

Sh*t!

In spite of my success with high open rates, so far I had very little luck with getting people to click on links in my emails.

In the first email, I suggested a quick test to assess the effectiveness of website copy. I linked to a tool that could help. No one clicked to it.

I attributed it to it being my first email. And thus the recipients’ trust in what I suggest might have been low.

I referenced relevant articles, expanding on what I talked about in emails. But all I got was an occasional click here and there.

I linked to well-known people but even this yield no success.

Apparently click through rate correlates with open rates but I can’t see it. My open rate has always been way above the average, my CTR quite the opposite.

There is of course a chance that resources I suggested weren’t that interesting.

But as I’m coming up to making a pretty big announcement to my list, I’m beginning to worry that this low CTR is going to hinder my efforts.

So I decided to research various ways to overcome that. Here are few ideas that stuck with me:

Include links in bullet points

Up until now I would include any links in the copy, just as I normally would in any other piece of content I write.

Turns out it might have been a mistake.

In the next email, I’m going to include them in bullet points, perhaps at the end of the article to make them stand out.

Add social buttons

I would never think of that but according to Econsultancy,

“Email messages including a social sharing option generated 30% higher click-throughs than emails without any social sharing links.”

According to the same source, only half of marketers do so.

Granted, these stats are few years old. But they do make sense, and certainly are worth trying out.

Create a sense of urgency

This might not be as relevant for messages containing only advice. But it seems ideal for those in which you ask your users to do something – sign up for a new webinar or grab your latest eBook, for instance.

As I explained in this post, urgency gives someone a reason to act now. It works because otherwise visitors tend to take their time. Whether it’s signing up for your event or availing of next sale, they like to evaluate other options. And procrastinate, often to a point when it’s too late for whatever they were pondering about.

But you can speed up this process.

Limiting a time in which they can take action in gives them a reason to act now.

But here’s the catch, in order for this to work, your offer must be irresistible. Otherwise, your buyers will simply keep looking for a better one.

Write less copy

Mailchimp suggests accompanying links with concise statements. In their study, they discovered that 8-12 words per link to be a sweet spot for CTR. That’s roughly how many words you should put around a link to make it stand out.

(image courtesy of Mailchimp)

Images can improve click-through-rate too

According to the same research, adding images can improve CTR as well. But, too many images can have the opposite effect. As Mailchimp suggests, include only few images for posts with 10 or less links (unless you sell posters, tshirts or other visual products of course).

Conclusion

It’s not easy to create a solid email marketing strategy. Getting people to open those emails is even harder. But what I’ve found to be the most challenging aspect of email marketing is influencing a reader to click on a link.