6 Ways to Increase Email Click Through Rate and User Engagement

Over the years, despite the proliferation of marketing channels, email marketing continues to be one of the most effective marketing mediums for brands and marketers. As it turns out, emails are also the third-most influential source of information for B2B audiences. 333.2 billion emails are sent and received each day in 2022. The average expected ROI is $42 for every $1 you spend on email marketing. Talking of which, is your email marketing strategy working for you, or are you noticing underwhelming CTRs? If you want to boost your email click through rate, you probably need to better your understanding of what makes a perfect email campaign.

Yes. You need to go beyond fixing your subject line and sender score, mobile optimizing and personalizing (which is not even an option today) your campaign as well as practicing email list hygiene, etc.

You must make your emails more interactive and surprise your subscribers such that they crave your next email. How you may ask? Let us figure that out together in this blog.

1. Step up and Adopt Real-time Marketing

This tip is for all forward-thinking marketers. A real-time email is based on factors in real-time variables such as weather (hail, rain, snow, precipitation, etc.) special events, geolocation, etc. These emails perform better because they provide contextually relevant, personalized, and timely experiences. For instance, if there’s a pilates event at Times Square, then organic food stores can run email campaigns where they give discount coupons to those who are attending the event. These kinds of real-time conversations are highly interactive in nature and are guaranteed to boost email CTR.

Back in 2015, marketers at the men’s fashion brand, Allen Edmonds experimented with real-time marketing. They sent weather-targeted emails. To subscribers who were in areas experiencing warmer than 40 degrees, they sent rain gear, whereas recipients in areas experiencing weather below 40 degrees received offers about winter shoes. This contextual relevance and timely interaction with their subscribers through email resulted in a 300% increase in CTR!

2. Use Interactive Content: Quizzes, Calculators, Surveys, and Polls

The #1 reason a customer leaves a company is that they feel the company doesn’t care about them. Clearly, if you want them to stay then you must be considerate of what they want to know and accordingly personalize their experience.

Do they want a loan?

Do they need help finding glasses that suit their face type?

Are they finding it difficult to determine what size of t-shirt to buy?

Help them find answers to such questions and give them the information they need.

A good idea is to delight them with interactive content. For instance, if you are a financial institution or a bank, you can create a calculator that helps your prospects calculate their monthly mortgage or a quiz that tells them if they are ready to buy a house yet.

Pro Tip: Need help getting started with creating similar interactive content and experience? We are here! Send an email to questions@outgrow.co or sign-up for a free seven-day trial to get a hands-on experience with our application.

Or, let’s say you are an e-commerce store. Remind those prospects who have abandoned their cart by sending them a clothes size guide calculator.

If you see, both these experiences are intriguing and will provide you with more customer data that you can use to segment and personalize future marketing efforts. Jackpot, eh?

3. Include Videos for your WORK!

Videos are no-brainers – visually appealing, entertaining, and engaging. Don’t believe us? An initial email with a video receives a CTR increase of 96%. In addition, attaching a video in an email can lead to a 200-300% increase in CTR.

Some good use of videos in emails includes product and course launches, customer testimonials, event announcements, how-to videos, etc. If you didn’t know, you can actually embed HTML5 videos in your emails. However, a fair warning before any of you gets too excited. Some email clients don’t support it (will display a fallback image) but even then those who do support represent half of the market share. Once you have figured that out, make sure videos don’t auto-play and are mute because no one likes their emails to play out loud for the public!

Furthermore, if you aren’t ready to embed an HTML5 video then start off by adding a play button on the static image. Sample the mailer below sent by Lens Culture magazine. Although it is not exactly interactive upon seeing the play button the most natural instinct for anybody is to click on it.

Moving on, we might as well add that you can fall back on GIFs. Perhaps learn from 18 brands who have mastered the art of using GIFs in emails! One warning though: don’t assume GIFs only add humor. A lot of brands, including ourselves, use it for purposes such as explaining product updates in a capsule, or GIF form.

Sounds good? But before you start using GIFs, let us issue the same warning as before – not every email client supports them. To overcome this, ensure that any key information you want your subscribers to know, such as the offer or the CTA, is in the first frame itself.

4. Help them with Quick, Live Shopping

This is your ONE chance to not just boost email CTR but also encourage your customers to complete a transaction. Apparently, this email to recover cart abandoners removes barriers and makes it easier for them to add or delete items within the email. The process is quick and friction-free as there are no redirections either to the website or the app. 

You can also embed a product recommendation quiz into your email to help out confused customers take the right decision. If they abandoned the cart because they were not sure what exactly to buy, a personalized recommendation straight into their inbox would work wonders. This kind of quiz can boost both email open rates as well as your conversion rates.

Check out the mailer below. It’s highly interactive as well as intuitive and allows the user to purchase and checkout with immense ease.

Here’s another example of an email by Litmus. The user can pick a conference date and package and simply checkout. Work gets done in fewer clicks.

5. Bring in the Menu Bar for the Ease of Navigation

Pique your user’s interest and attention by introducing menus in your emails. It’s a fairly simple and effective design feature. It will make your email look less like an email and more like an application, especially on mobile phones where there is space restriction. Easier to navigate, it gives your users more content to browse and more time to interact with you without going elsewhere.

For these reasons alone, it is a good idea to start experimenting with carousel sliders with sharp images and clear, actionable text or accordion and hamburger menus. The objective is to provide a smooth, app-like experience as will make your email stand out!

Sample this email where UK retailer, B&Q used a carousel in their email and totally surprised their subscribers. The email literally begs to be clicked. One link after another!

6. Let them Scratch that Itch

Who remembers scratching discount coupons as kids? We do! In fact, we get as excited even now! No matter whether we win or lose, it’s always so much fun! Now, the good thing is that you can use these scratch cards in your emails too. It is a sure-shot way of getting your subscribers curious and boosting your click-through rate and sales. These scratch cards could be anything, including free shipping, free gift, or an attractive discount. Send them in welcome emails or as a gentle nudge to cart abandoners who will perhaps be more inclined to buy now that there’s an offer in the picture!

Wrap-up Time

Now that you are equipped with these strategies, we hope you are already planning your first interactive campaign to boost email CTR! Before we leave you to it, let us remind you to never stop A/B testing. It is going to help you know which interactive content is improving your click-through rate and your customer’s brand affinity.

What do you say?

Are you ready to push the boundaries of email design and add a wow factor to the otherwise static marketing messages?