How to Effectively Use Email to Boost Website Traffic
Email is one of the most potent traffic boosting sources for digital marketers. It’s currently considered the best way to communicate directly with customers, outperforming content marketing, and even social media. Also, email marketing is low-cost. Unlike both content and social media marketing, you can create a sound email marketing campaign with little to no budget.
Above all, email integrates with almost every other digital marketing strategy. From content marketing to advertising to video marketing and social media, email works seamlessly with them all.
For these reasons, email can be an instrumental tool in generating web traffic. The following are a few smart ways to use your email strategy to boost website traffic.
1. Segment your email list
According to multiple studies, including a recent one by Pure360, email segmentation boosts deliverability, increases open rates, and reduces unsubscribe rates. Better still, studies by HubSpot show that segmented email lead nurturing accounts for 58% of revenue and increased click-through rates. Click-through is a term used for traffic that reaches your website from a link.
2. Send mobile-friendly emails
Campaign Monitor recently found that a whopping 81% of users now open their emails on their smartphones. If you don’t optimize for this group, up to 80% say they’ll instantly delete the message, and another 45% say they’ll go as far as to unsubscribe from your list. You can see how this could easily derail your traffic generation efforts.
3. Write strong subject lines
You’ll be surprised to hear this, but as many as 35% of users open their emails based on the subject line alone. That’s slightly more than a third of potential email traffic to your site lost if your headline is unconvincing. It gets worse, with 69% of users sending you to the spam folder based solely on the subject line.
4. Get the sending frequency right
How many emails should you send to each recipient daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly? This is very important for your traffic generation campaign. Send too few emails, and you may fail to stress the message enough or get enough attention. On the other hand, sending too many emails amounts to spamming. Both issues can negatively impact email traffic. Therefore, you must get the frequency right for your industry and audience.
5. Follow industry best send times
A few people tend to mix up best send times for open rates and CTR. If you’re just interested in email opens, then 8 am is the best time to send. However, for the highest click-through rates, 5 pm works best. All breaks, such as lunch hour (around 1 pm) and commute hours, just before 8 am and after 5 pm, also work well. Decide on your campaign objective, then select the best send time.
6. Personalize your emails
As more people get into digital marketing, competition has shifted from pricing and products to personalization and customer service. It’s no longer about what you offer, but how well you treat the customer. So, call your email recipients by name, remember their birthdays, and send personalized gifts from time to time. This can increase click-through rates and increase traffic to your site.
7. Use videos within your emails
Emails with visuals, especially videos, perform better, even generating higher click-through rates than plain text alternatives. This has something to do with our natural affection for visuals. From a recent Campaign Monitor study, emails with videos generate 96% more click-throughs. Including a link to a video, meanwhile, increases CTR by up to 65%.
Other Tips
Aside from the seven strategies above, we also recommend leveraging automation to minimize human errors such as mixing up messages. Additionally, remember to consistently A/B test your emails to find out what works best. Continue to revise and change your email marketing campaigns to maximize your lead generation and boost website traffic.