Studies show that brands are increasingly concerned with boosting email click-through rates - but how can they encourage greater engagement with their marketing materials?

User engagement with content is hard to come by. The end of the year has almost arrived, and a lot of marketers have been looking toward the future – especially as it concerns email marketing. Campaigner surveyed brands and found that their biggest priorities for email in 2015 were increasing clickthrough rates.

Other top priorities include: 

 Improving data collection (13.68 percent of respondents)
 Creating a holistic marketing plan (20 percent)
 Increasing click-through rates (52.36 percent). 

It’s no surprise brands would hold this as the Holy Grail of email marketing: A high CTR means people are engaging with content, becoming referral traffic and being cookied – so they’re giving up valuable prospect data that can be used to improve campaigns going forward.

What makes customers click?

So if brands are determined to boost clicks in their emails, what should they be doing?

Use the right CTAs

As Brafton reported, calls-to-action can make a world of difference. Facebook is banking on big click-through rates from brand pages by offering custom buttons with a variety of CTA options, and studies have shown a few small CTA tweaks can significantly boost conversion rates.

Include user-generated content

Giving customers and prospects user-generated content (UGC) is a tried-and-true way to connect with leads and improve readership. And according to Campaign Monitor, excerpted social comments and user reviews can bolster emails and significantly drive up clicks.

Embed visually appealing media

Some brand advocates think email should be clean and simple. However, web users are increasingly seeing visual content in their social news feeds and across the web. So, as Brafton reported, it could be a mistake to avoid videos, images and even GIFs in emails when they have the power to raise click-through rates.

Of course, while all of these options are reasonable for brands to invest in, it doesn’t change the fact that a good email marketing campaign begins and ends with a quality contact list. If the people on the other end of a blast aren’t interested in content – and didn’t sign up for it to begin with – they’re never going to click on a link, let alone open a message.

Want to learn more about email marketing? Check out these Brafton resources:
Dynamic email marketing builds loyalty, drives leads [data]
Stop talking about personalization and do it – Your email marketing depends on it
For email marketing, relevant content counts [study]

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.