Should you be using email marketing to drive traffic to your website? Before I answer this question, let’s take a step back and think.
You’ve sent out those emails and have an excellent open rate, but no one seems to be clicking through to your website. Has it ever happened to you?
Actually, let me rephrase, has it ever occurred to you- what should you do in such a scenario?
This article will guide you on increasing your email click-through rate and driving traffic and sales to your website. Let us begin.
Table of contents:
- What is email marketing?
- Four steps to follow to boost traffic on your website
- Answering the question- Should you be using email marketing to drive traffic to your website?
What is email marketing?
Simply put, email marketing is what businesses use to promote their product or service.
It is one of the most exciting tools in your toolkit. Email helps build trust and credibility when communicating with customers, generate leads and create sales opportunities, plus provide an engaging experience for the recipients. Take a look at email newsletters, for example. You can include updates and entertaining content in your subscriber’s inbox and make sure you send follow-ups with thank you messages or other nurturing emails. You don’t need to spend lots of money on email marketing; any business owner can do it. Anyone with access to the internet can use it too.
What’s more? Automation! Automation tools can help automate your entire email marketing strategy. With access to your prospects and customers at all times, regardless of whether you’re sitting in front of your computer or chilling on a beach chair, automation tools ensure that they send personalised messages to your customers at the most appropriate time. Email marketing is the rockstar of marketing strategies with a massive ROI and innumerable benefits.
Four steps to follow to boost traffic on your website
1. Tell a story
When we tell stories to children, we create an emotional attachment and a desire to listen, but more than that, we generate curiosity about what will happen next. Curiosity is innate in human behaviour, and every marketer must leverage that.
Storytelling has been around for centuries. It is not something new, and stories are engaging, which is why so many people enjoy reading or watching soap operas or movies. What draws audiences in are the tales and personalities told in these types of stories. Stories can also help the customer understand what you are trying to sell, but one should also know the art of storytelling.
Also read: The Art of Brand Building – Storytelling & Creative Communication
It’s important to be able to tell a story that captivates your reader. If they don’t like your email’s opening, they’ll stop reading it. This is why you should spend time crafting great openings that hook them as soon as they open the email.
2. Include multiple links.
More links mean more clicks. Now, of course, you don’t want to go overboard and include 20 links at a time, or it’ll risk being flagged as spam. So, what’s the optimum? And how do you know when to stop adding outbound links for every section of your content?
You should include two to three links in your post. When you have a few relevant, high-quality links in your email, it is more likely that someone will click one of them and visit your website or buy something.
3. End it with a call-to-action
Be sure to end with a call-to-action (CTA). Every email should end with a strong call-to-action (CTA). Consider what actions you want your readers to take after reading your email and how you can make it easy for them to do so. A CTA can include information on what the reader should do; for example, share your content on social media, follow your blog, or subscribe to receive updates.
4. Use casual anchor text in your emails.
Next, let us look at the use of casual anchors in email marketing.
Ensure your link anchor text is casual before posting it on your site. If you use the anchor text as the title of your website, nobody will click through. However, suppose you anchor text your links in your email as something like “learn more here”, “follow these strategies”, or “follow these tips”. In that case, people are likelier to click through because they assume it has some beneficial information.
So, first, choose a word or phrase you want to be the anchor text for your email. For example, if I wanted to use “I hope you’re having a great day today!” as my anchor text, I would type that phrase into my email.
The next step is to include this word or phrase throughout the body of your email in various places so that it becomes natural. You can use the word or phrase as a greeting, an introduction sentence, or even a question at the end of your message. For example, if I were sending an email about how great it was meeting someone new at the XYZ event, I could say, “Hi Paul, I am ABC from the XYZ event..” and then continue the email with how great it was meeting him. These small practices are sure to drive traffic!
Let’s consider an example of Litmus
Litmus did this email campaign to introduce its dark mode.
Here are the best elements of the email
- the mail addresses the pain point of white light
- it has multiple CTAs aimed at getting the users to try the dark mode.
- the opening sentence is sure to grab eyeballs
- the email has just enough anchor texts
- finally, it uses storytelling.
Answering the question- Should you be using email marketing to drive traffic to your website?
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to get your message in front of your target audience. It has been found that the average ROI of email marketing is more than 100%, with segmentation as one of the most effective email marketing strategies (78%).
Also recommended: MIA Research Report: Best Brand Building Practices- What Experience Teaches Businesses
But before you start sending out emails to your prospects and customers, there are some things you need to keep in mind. Follow these four tips. Create an email with a subject line that is compelling enough for people to open it and served with a story that will get the attention of your audience. Make sure to add the CTAs and a few casual anchor texts. Now give your email campaign a try. You will have an answer to your question.
