How to get the click (even when you can't)

Most people don't click on emails. And most marketers don't care.

You can pull out all the tools in the email marketing shed: copywriting, subject line optimization, calls to action, trigger mails, segmentation...but you still can't avoid the problem that most people don't click.

Why? Because right now I'm just not interested in buying a new pair of trainers or reading about changes to tax laws.

But who cares, right?

The click is the first real action on the road to a conversion. Whether that conversion is a sale, download, registration, donation, whatever.

If somebody isn't going to convert, then why would you worry about getting the click?

Here are four reasons...

1. Email isn't only about conversions. It's about getting people to interact positively with your brand or organization. The deeper this interaction, the greater the impacts on the "relationship" between sender and recipient...the more attention and influence you gain.

2. We are creatures of habit: if we found something clickworthy in one email, we are more likely to pay attention to the next one.

[And vice versa, as explained in the recent post on the slow death of your email...]

3. A click takes people to a website, which is a much richer display environment. It gives you more opportunities to engage the reader and drive some kind of positive (inter)action.

4. Positive interaction with your emails sets you apart from "bad" emailers. According to a recent Pivotal Veracity report, webmail services are increasingly taking user-email interaction (including clicks) into account when determining whether a sender's emails are worthy of delivery.

So clicks are worth having in their own right, but here's a crass example of the problem. These are the last few emails received from a domain name registrar:



If I'm not interested in actually buying a domain name, I'm not going to click on these emails.

[Incidentally, even if I am, there's no sense of urgency, since clearly I can wait a few days for the next discount to come trundling along.]

So we want a click, but we come back to our original problem that what we feature is simply not relevant to the majority. So what can you do? Here some ideas...

Offbeat items and humor

Newsletter expert Michael Katz writes:

"...I find this consistently across all types of newsletter, my own and those of my clients. No matter how "serious" the subject matter, the highest clicks are always the diversions."

I can echo that for my own newsletter. Links to such things as Darth Vader's inbox or a talking email regularly score more clicks than even the most insightful marketing articles.

Of course, humor is tricky. We can't all be Ricky Gervais. But you can think of these "diversions" in other ways. Amy Hamilton, for example, notes:

"I find that the emails I tend to click on and forward the most are the ones containing the most outrageous products, just for the humor of it."

...and features some examples from Buckle, Forever 21 and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Ancillary calls to action

Your email usually focuses on getting people to do something very specific (buy the product on offer, read the article, register for the webinar).

Provided they don't distract from your main content, additional calls to action can pick up clicks where the main focus is not relevant to the recipient.

Navigation bars, for example, are menus of links to one side of the main content:



In his report on the topic, Chad White says navigation bars:

"...give your subscribers a clear and familiar path to engage with you even when they're not interested in your email's main message."

Another example is outlined in this post: adding footer links to content from previous emails lifted the number of clicks per opened email from 0.47 to 0.61.

Video animations and "click to find out..."

I've talked a lot recently about video email, and one post cites various examples where video lifts clickthroughs quite significantly.

Is there a broader principle at work?

Anne Holland reported on a website video test and noted:

"...perhaps being forced to interact with the video to hear sound got more prospects into 'interaction mode' so they were then more willing to click a 'join' button next."

Perhaps, then, part of the click appeal of the audio-free video .gif approach in email is a simple desire to hear the sound. The click puts the reader in interaction mode and leads them further down the conversion road.

The only Ology I ever studied was biology, but it seems reasonable to suggest that "teaser" video might work just as well to gain clicks as the teaser email summaries used to get people to clickthrough to online articles.

You might make broader use of the teaser concept, for example by featuring mystery offers ("click to reveal the discount offer") or linking to the coupon code ("click here to get your personal coupon code").

Teaser summaries for articles enjoy widespread acceptance among recipients, because they understand you can't fill an email with too much article text and they enjoy the ability to quickly scan and choose what to read.

The same might not apply to those kinds of teasers where there is no clear reason why you can't just put the content in the email.

So those kinds of teasers need to be used sparingly, otherwise you give the impression that you don't value the time and attention of your subscribers.

The content approach

I've asked before whether email marketers should become content publishers to keep people engaged and solve the "most don't click" problem.

There are different ways to approach this. For example, you can:

• ...go the newsletter route and focus mostly on engaging content, like Backcountry does with its newsletter.
• ...tag content onto promotional messages, like Columbia Sportswear does with the video review feature in this email discussed by Dylan Boyd.
• ...integrate promotional messages into content, as in this simple self-tanning how-to from Bliss.
• ...supplement promotional mails with tidbits of free information, as Linda Bustos explains here.

Feedback, surveys, competitions, reviews, polls, loss leader offers

Of course, building interaction into email dates back to the first use of a question mark in the text. So let's not overlook tried and tested ways to get people to respond without having to follow a "shop now" or "continue reading" or "register today" link.

Some examples:

• Jake Holman describes the great copy used by MarketingProfs to solicit feedback on an online seminar
• Blue Tent Marketing won a MarketingSherpa award for their holiday-themed customer survey email
• ...as did Air Canada for their Dream Destination email competition, which carries the tagline "Dream. Click. Win a trip." (my emphasis!)
• SmartPak send out automatic emails 14 days after a purchase soliciting product reviews. The tactic increased reviews sixfold.
• Poll scripts don't work in emails, but you can ask a single question and provide a selection of answers in the form of links. People vote by clicking on a link and your tracking data records the winning answer (and who voted for what). David Dennis explains the technique and how you might use it to build out your subscriber profiles.

Note that all these efforts drive engagement, but serve other goals too: data collection, profiling for later segmentation, content generation, etc..

Finally, an earlier post raised the possibility of loss leader emails: ones that feature extravagant offers or incentives that attract plenty of clicks to gain engagement wins at (perhaps) the expense of short-term profits. Amy Hamilton has some examples.

Any other suggestions for encouraging clicks and interaction?

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