The Holy Grail of marketing is analytics. Most email marketing campaigns are click bait designed to get the reader to click a link and be directed to a page. But what do you do if you’re not seeing click-throughs in the reports for email campaigns? The answers are surprisingly simple.

The Numbered List

People don’t have the time we expect of them, so the easier you make it for them the more likely they are to read what you have to say. No matter what industry you’re in, numbered list content is almost impossible to deny. You’ve definitely seen numerical posts before: “5 Ways to Cultivate Swag,” or “10 Ways to Finish Summer With a Bang.”

If you’re going this route, then do two things. First, use an image with every number. Second, make each number point is in bold especially if you plan on adding copy below the numerical. This allows readers to scan the content reading just the headings and looking at the pictures to get the idea. (Lean is about your reader just as much as it is about us. Make it easy for them to quickly get through your content).

Double-Backing

Sometimes, it’s not just about the links in the email. There’s another problem with click-throughs and it’s that a reader can’t click through if they haven’t even opened the email. There could by any number of reasons why a reader didn’t click open. In most cases, especially if they have Gmail, it could just be that your email got lost in a pile of others. If that’s the case, resend it. In fact, resend all email campaigns that weren’t opened. If you’re finding that still didn’t work, it might be worth it to run an a/b test on the resend and just change something like the subject line for half of them. You can also try changing the times the campaigns are sent.

The rule here is: don’t give up. Just keep trying and changing up how you deliver that campaigns.

Playing with Delivery Times

Pinging off the last point, delivery times has a huge role to play with click open and click-through rates. There’s no magic equation here. You need to look at your list of subscribers and maybe gather some necessary data. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to educate, sell, or stimulate engagement? Each one requires the individual to have a certain amount of time and ability to act. For example, if you want people to make a purchase, then sending out a morning campaign probably isn’t the best time. That’s when they’re just getting into office and starting their day. For women, lunch time is popular for e-commerce sales. For moms and students, late afternoon tends to be more popular.

You can also get an idea of sales patterns by looking at a history of purchasers and seeing what times tend to produce the highest sales versus the lowest. If you have enough consumer data, you can work backwards to see which type of consumers made purchases within select time-frames.