What is an "Anchor Tag" and How Your Email Campaign Can Benefit!

We get this question quite a bit here at VerticalResponse when people are setting up their email marketing campaigns: "What is an anchor tag and how can I use them?" But what worried me is that people might not even know to ask what and anchor tag is. Many businesses can benefit from anchor tags in their email campaigns right now!

Definition of Anchor Tags

Here goes: An anchor tag is simply a link within an email or a web page that directs you to a specific area within that page or email so you don't have to search and scroll, especially if your email has a lot of information.

A great example of anchor tags in use is the Splendora Style Forecast newsletter.  They include a bulleted list of links at the top of their emails entitled "In This Issue" so a recipient can quickly scan this issue to see if there's anything that grabs their attention. Then they can click right to it without scrolling.

You'll see the first item "Quilted Mark Jacobs Bag Sweeps" and if you click on it you'd be directed to the first article. Easy!

How to include an anchor tag using the VerticalResponse Email Canvas tool.

1. List your article headlines or a variation of them at the top of the email just like Splendora does in "In This Issue" in a bulleted or list format.
   
2. For each headline in the body of your email (in this instance "Quilted Marc Jacobs Bag Sweeps" in the dark brown bar) you'd click your cursor right before the first letter of the text.
3. In the toolbar at the top of the Email Canvas you'll see an "anchor" button that looks like. Click on it.
4. A pop up will appear asking you to name the "anchor tag". Name it something relevant. In this case maybe "sweepstakes". Click Insert. An anchor symbol should appear right where your cursor was.
5. Go back to the "In the News" list at the top of the email where you want to have the link and highlight the headline.
6. Click "link" which looks like and a popup will appear. Right below where they ask you to fill in the URL, you'll see "anchors" with a drop down menu. Find what you named your anchor and select it.
7. Voila, you've just created an anchor tag. Now test it by sending an email to yourself.

It's easy to do and it really helps your readers get to the meat of what they want out of your email.

Comments

[Ray]

For anchor tags to work in most email clients you need to add the following code to the body your HTML

The BASE tag usually only appears in the head, but some email clients strip it out. Having it in the body still works though.

This doesn't work in Outlook 2003 however. Perhaps also putting the BASE tag in the HEAD might help, but I have not tested it.

[internet marketing company]

Thanks for this very impressive article. Very helpful.

[leah]

Hi
Thanks very much I've tried a couple times to use the anchor button but have never actually been able to get it right. I was anchoring the headline rather than the body of text. You learn something every day don't you!
cheers leah
www.byokids.com.au

[Melanie]

Hi there...great article...and just to add to it, anchor tags or anchor text is the best way to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) for particular keywords...I have done this with many articles, blogs and comments with the words video classifieds (see my example right in this comment) and it has moved my ranking up to the first page on Google, and first result on both Yahoo and MSN.

The method is to use the same key words over and over with the link back to your site and the search engines crawl this and if they find it relevant to what's on your site, it improves your ranking INCREDIBLY!!

:-)

[Will McNamara]

I have always used hyperlinks to go to another page, but anchors seem to be a great way to get viewers to the immediate content they are interested in seeing / reading.
Do search engines reward pages that have more anchor links, or is it still better to just create another html page. For example: on a faq page, should info be listed on same page and anchor link to where answer is on that page, or, is it better to create a whole new html page answering and giving info on the particular FAQ.
I am liking the info and updates I get from VR. I am a new member and learning about all the services.

Thanks

WJM

[Jim Legington]

Hey there Janine,

This a great Post about using "Anchor Tags".
I'm going to work on getting more involved in using them myself. Thank You for sharing. Be Blessed always...Peace!

[Greg Nisbet]

Anchor tags also don't work in Lotus Notes; not a big deal for B to C, but a much bigger deal for B to B.

[Janine Popick]

For Nelson - Gmail works for me.

[Janine Popick]

For Paul - I'm checking on that Outlook 2003 thing, doesn't make sense, it works in most email readers for us.

[Daniel Tetreault]

Hey, VR Guys.

Great post regarding the use of anchor tags in a company newsletter.

It was quite apparent to me after reading this post in your vertical response blog how using anchor tags in a newsletter and directly benefit the end-user's effective use and navigation in a company newsletter. Use of these anchor tags would likely result in greater end-user clicks and visits to a companies newsletter - not to mention to result in greater time spent reading the newsletter.

Sincerely,

Daniel

[Nelson Pimenta]

Yes but... does it work inside main email clients like Gmail and Hotmail?

NP

[Joaquin]

Hey! thank you very much for this tip. Add more usefull themes like this.

[Paul Guyon]

I received your email newsletter today on using Anchor Tags in newsletters at emails. When I click on your likes a Link Dialog Box(file open) opens and I do not jump to anwhere in the email as designed.

You may want to test your emails. The anchor tags have never worked for me in any of your newsletters.

Maybe it's my email client (I use Outlook 2003) but I don't think so.