Ideally, clicks on marketing emails from ecommerce merchant always result in sales. However, the growth in smartphone usage globally has changed the behavior patterns of email recipients. Many people have access to smartphones and thus opens are increasing in a good rate. But while this is happening, there is a decline in click rates from these mobile users.
Reasons for Decline in Click Rates
• Getting commitments from individuals opening on their smartphones is a bit difficult.
• At times it is hard for shoppers using smartphones to navigate through the site well using their phones and thus many smartphone users opts to wait for a laptop or desktop to open.
• The appeal of the email is lost on the smartphone.
• The copy is probably out of date and non informative.
Noting the difficulties faced by merchants, I will discuss the three most effective ways of increasing your click-through rates from smartphone as well as desktop users.
1. Consider the Use of Video to Increase Clicks
It is a well known phenomenon that videos are very engaging and thus can to increase clicks on your site. Your site can also get social shares using such videos or simply build brand awareness. There are product descriptions that a text description cannot do well to explain and thus the need to use a video to describe such products.
Deliverability is reduced by embedding an actual video in the body of an email. Instead of embedding the actual video in the body of the email, you can opt to use a simple image that has a play button over it. It is on clicking on to that image that the recipient will be redirected to where the video is hosted.
2. Tease the Audience
Curiosity is a common element in all consumers. You can engage your email recipients by adding teasers to the email sent to ignite their curiosity and eventually click on them. This method has worked in social media where we have seen interesting headings such as “She sent a simple letter. Guess what happened next?”
If social media can benefit from this approach, why not try it as your email marketing strategy? You can use good marketing teasers such as the variable discounts that are unique to every individual. The individual browsing can only know of his discount when checking out. This will make the recipient complete the cart process in anticipation of knowing his discount.
3. Change Routine
While having the same type of creativity in sending emails to your recipients save you a lot of time, it can also work against you when the recipients start getting bored of the same message types over and over. This leads to stagnation of opens and click rates.
The email content should be dynamic. This means that it should be changed frequently so as to increase your click rates. Effective ways of changing your email content is by rotating product offer with other types of communication. Examples of new types of communication include;
• New product features
• List of top products
• Recommendations of products based on previous purchase made
• Ideas of gift giving
• Tips, tricks and relevant articles.
King Arthur exemplifies well this idea of changing content frequently. Offer, recipes and contents are among his rotated content so as to keep the email different from the one sent previously.
