5 Tips to Increase Your Email Marketing Response Rate

Email marketing is still one of the best marketing channels for small businesses. Despite cries that “email marketing is dead,” email marketing remains an extremely effective way to reach customers — especially when you provide people with valuable content and promotions. Just last year, the average email campaign had a nearly 25% open rate and 12% click-through rate, which a higher engagement than most other forms of online marketing.

When it comes to email marketing you don’t only want people to open your emails, you want them to take some sort of action. That’s why it’s important to figure out what makes your audience respond to your email campaigns.

How to Boost Email Marketing Response Rates

Since I have a passion for figuring out what makes people tick online when it comes to their buying behavior, I decided to go on a mission to find out what makes people more likely to act on an email. After testing a variety of options, here are five tips for increasing your email marketing response rate.

#1: Make it Mobile Friendly

Having your emails be mobile friendly is no longer an option, it’s a necessity.

Imagine waiting in line at the post office. You open your email app on your phone and click on the first one. Instantly, you turn your phone to the side. The email won’t respond to your mobile device, so you turn your phone back and delete it.

You’re not the only who would respond this way, the larger majority of email users will delete an email if it’s not optimized for mobile devices.

Statistics show there are 2.2 billion mobile email users, and more than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. That means that if you’re not optimizing your emails for mobile you risk not reaching more than half of your audience. Every email you send needs to be optimized for mobile.

#2: Request a Reply

Consumers want to feel they have a human connection to business-related emails. If they feel as though a software program simply sends out thousands of auto-generated emails, they don’t feel special.

A great way to make people feel special is to add a personal touch to emails. Ask them to reply to the email, as they would reply to an email from a loved one. By doing so, you show that you value their opinion and want to hear from them.

The key to this is to be sure someone from your team is available to answer those emails. If you ask for replies, get them, and then the emails go unanswered, consumers may feel jilted, which could turn them off to interacting with your business again.

#3: Ask Them to Make a Call

Again, it’s the human connection people want from marketing emails. Asking someone to call your business shows that you want to connect with them on a more personal level.

With so many people using mobile devices to check their email, if you include a request to call in your email most people reading it won’t even have to switch devices in order to take action.

Clicking on a mobile responsive phone number is very easy. So, not only is there a human connection, but it doesn’t take much effort or time. Both of these things are key factors in creating emails that generate strong response rates.

#4: Click on a Link

If you make it easy for email recipients to click on links in your email, it will increase click-through rates. Simply telling people to “Click here!” is enough to motivate people to tap or click through to a site. It’s also a good idea to make the images in your emails link back to your site or to the service or product page that they’re advertising.

Recently, I received an email from my favorite retailer advertising a great sale on all dresses. I really liked the dress pictured in the email, so I immediately tapped on it to see if it was still available.

Would I have clicked on it if I didn’t like the dress pictured? Maybe. If the sale was enticing enough to make me want to know what other dresses were available.

I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have clicked through to the website if I had to open up my browser and type in the retailer’s URL and then try to search for the dress. That’s too much work when you’re already in the groove of checking emails. However, going from an email to a site with one action doesn’t take much effort since I can simply hit the back button to go back to my email when I’m done.

Make it obvious that you want your audience to click on a link and make sure the link takes them to a page that reflects what was in your email.

#5: Send Trigger Emails

Trigger emails are emails sent after a person takes an action on your website or as a result of a meaningful event in your subscriber’s profile (such as a birthday). These can be thank you emails, confirmation emails, receipts for purchase, abandoned shopping cart emails, or even emails wishing someone a happy birthday or anniversary.

Trigger emails have high open and click-through rates because of how inherently personalized these emails are. This means that these emails create an opportunity to make another sale. Include promotions in these emails and use them as a way to up-sell your clients or offer them a special discount as a thank you for their loyalty.