The following is a blog post originally published by EIM Senior Copywriter Mike Phillips, on his own blog. We loved his email marketing tips and now share them with you, our Envisoinit community.
“How do I increase my email open rates and click rates?” That’s a common question of marketers and business owners. As a professional copywriter and marketer, I have some ideas I can share that might help.
I’m also the owner and writer of Windy City Weekly, a weekly email newsletter with Chicago news, restaurant recommendations, things to do for the week, and a few other weekly highlights. To date, my open rate hovers around 42%, and my click rate is about 58%—far above the media/publishing industry standards of about 19% and 22%, according to Constant Contact.
How do I do it?
Outside of standard advice (write compelling headlines and content, and provide value), here are five ways I’m getting big open and click rates with email: read the full story...
- Write clearly, and concisely. It’s a privilege to be invited to the user’s inbox. Everyone is busy and distracted online, so it’s important to be direct and clear, and to not waste the user’s time. Get the message across that you need to, while removing everything that’s not absolutely necessary. Over time, your subscribers will be conditioned to know that they can open, read, and click within your email without a big time commitment.
- Remove distractions. It’s a fairly simple formula. The less distractions, the more likely a recipient will click on what you want them to click. Images are a good way to draw attention to a particular link but too many of them, and the recipient will lose focus. Gaudy banners? Forget about it. Varying fonts and type sizes are distracting, too. Keep your content as clean, simple, and consistent as you can so that users can quickly hone in on what you want them to click.
Organizations choose to redesign their website for many necessary reasons. One important aspect of a post website redesign is the impact it has on analytics. Here is a quick list of those things in your web analytics platform that will probably look different after your website redesign project.
Content Consumption
Your newly redesigned site content will be read by many new and existing visitors. Changes in navigation, internal linking structure, and content will change the way users perceive your brand and move through the site. You should expect pages that were previously high in page views may drop in views depending on where they were moved in site navigation structure.
You should expect the path through your site from the home page to be different. Using the Google Analytics Visitor Flow Report, you can assess your user’s path through your website. Compare the path of users before and after redesign.
Google Analytics Report Location: Audience > Visitor Flow
Sample Google Analytics Visitor Flow Report
SEO
Navigation changes also affect your site URL structure. Pages that are moved deeper within the website navigation structure can experience a drop in traffic volumes. To account for changes and drops in search volume you will need an SEO plan, or an experienced agency partner. Major search engines must understand where your pages have moved and that the content is the same so your site does not lose relevance on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Depending on your new site navigation structure, URL structure, and changes in content you may experience variation in your natural search keyword volume. You should expect changes to your keyword volumes.
Google Analytics Report Location: Traffic Sources > Search > Organic. read the full story...
There has been a rumor going around that Facebook has made changes to all business pages that will preventing that business’s posts from being seen by all of their fans, even those who have already liked the business page. You may have seen some pages posting updates similar to:
“Facebook is now charging to see all of our posts. To see all of our updates, please go to our page and click where it says, “Liked” and select “Show in News Feed.”
Is this rumor true? Yes and No. Let me explain.
Limited views in your fans’ news feeds
If you manage a Facebook Page for your business, you may have noticed that your reach has dropped over the past couple months. This is not from any recent change (as any fan that already likes your page will have the “Show in News Feed” area already checked off), but this is because of a Facebook algorithm that they have been running for quite some time called “Edgerank.” The Edgerank algorithm calculates a variety of factors, including each specific fan’s past interaction with your page, the popularity of each specific update, type of update (link, photo, text, etc), and many more factors that normal human beings like us will never know of. Based off a variety of factors, your page will be displayed in the news feed to a certain percentage of your fan base, and not every fan that has liked your page. read the full story...
