For many companies across a wide variety of industries, email marketing has become one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and boost your sales. According to "Mail Chimp," the 2015 average Marketing email click through rate rests at a paltry 2.21%. If you want to learn how more about click through rates for your specific industry, check out this Mail Chimp article (includes table). In an average workday, people receive hundreds of emails, so it can often be difficult for your company to stand out. Having invested considerable resources into your email campaign, you sure don't want to be overshadowed by deals from other competitors. If you are not quite sure how to improve your email click through rate, here are five basic steps to help you ensure you are creating effective emails.

Create Brief, Focused Content

This tip applies to all industries: make a conscious effort to always respect your customer’s time. With the explosion of click-bait articles and headlines, it’s important to create honest lean content. Did you know that the average person receives 10-20 emails in a day, which means that you can expect them to look at your email subject line for a few seconds before moving on to the next. So, if you do motivate your customers to open the email, you only have a few additional seconds to secure their interest with your content; therefore, your content needs to be focused, precise and structured in a way that is easy for readers to scan.

Include Visually Stimulating Images

You can drastically improve your email marketing just by applying simple details like adding visual and bold color elements to it. Black-and-white emails are bland and won't stand out to your target audience. In order to alleviate this try to spice up your emails, and think about inserting images into it (actually we more than recommend this). Make sure these images are relevant to the message you're trying to convey, and if at all possible, make them visually striking.

Personalization Goes A Long Way

Simply put, the more personalized an email is, the greater chance it has of generating a lead. Users love feeling individualized, and catered to for their specific needs. Adding personalization makes it easier for them to connect and build a relationship with businesses that they are found of. So, what can you do to further personalize your emails? Besides including their name in the email, you can also use any and all other information that is related to what your email is trying to accomplish. You could include the name of their company and location, and even mention previous interactions. This lets readers know how important they are, and the effort will really stand out against all the other marketing emails that end up in their inbox.

Keep Call To Action Close To The Top

Nearly 70 percent of readers won’t see your call to action if it happens to be placed below the fold. For this reason, you should include at least three variants of your call to action throughout the email. To further optimize this, place the three call-to-actions in different places within the design. Unfortunately, important calls to action are often included towards the end of a newsletter, almost as thought it was an after thought. The lesson? You don’t want website viewers or email subscribers to have a difficult time finding and responding to your call to actions. Don’t turn your prospects into kids scavenging for Easter eggs-- make it easy for them to find your offer!

Make Sure All Your Emails Are Mobile-Friendly

This tip could almost go without explanation, but here we go. Consider how often you read emails on your smartphone? If you are constantly on the road, I bet it’s a lot. If your company’s email content is not compatible with tablets and mobile devices of all sizes, your click through rates will drop drastically. Try to get into the habit of personally testing your marketing emails on various mobile devices before you send them out to your contact list.

ImageWorks, LLC

If you're looking to generate leads, engage with your customers, or promote a brand, service, or product, you may want to develop a strategic email marketing campaign to educate and influence your prospects. ImageWorks, LLC can work with you to improve your current marketing plan, overcome your challenges, achieve your goals, and meet deadlines. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, you can attract qualified prospects to your business and keep them coming back for more. We cover each and every step taken, tool used, and lifecycle stage to help assist the customer, effectively helping to empower marketers to attract visitors, convert leads, close customers, and delight promoters.