Are Your Clicks Happening Below the Fold?

I was recently analyzing some past email marketing campaigns that we do here ourselves at VerticalResponse, much like the one you (hopefully) read every two weeks.

Our newsletter as you may know has a column on the left hand side with some information and has our blog posts (2-3 depending on my level of "busy") on the top and down the right hand side.

I wanted to find out what percentage of clicks in a given newsletter really happen to those articles "below the fold". BTF is the area where you have to begin scrolling to see the rest of the email in your email reader.

Stats are always interesting to me so I thought I'd share.

43-60% of all clicks in an email happened in the first article which is mainly above the fold. Caveat, we have been using "anchor tags" above the fold to give readers a tease of what's below. We think it has helped our click rate overall. (I try to lead with what I think is the strongest to pull readers in.)

15-30% of all clicks happened on the 2nd article.

6-8% of all clicks happened in the third article.

Then I looked at all of the article headlines above the fold (which also serve as the subject line in most cases) to see the specific percentages of clicks in the given email:

• 6 Ways to Reduce Costs and Gain Customers - 43%
• Great Idea for Member Appreciation - 60%
• VerticalResponse Has Surveys - 54%
• Email Etiquette: 3 Things to Think About When Emailing Someone One on One - 43%
• 9 Cheap and Easy Ideas to Help Your Business Grow - 54%

The last one was interesting - Although it was in line with what our ranges are for the specific email it got the most clicks on a link ever. This email happened to have twice the amount of links included in it than any of the other campaigns.

There was one email with the article line up that looked out of the norm:

• 1st article: 6 Ways to Reduce Costs and Gain Customers - 43%
• 2nd article: 5 Ways to Put Surveys to Use for Your Business - 9.4%
• 3rd article: Lead Generation Idea - Good, Bad & Ugly - 26.2%

The third one was the only one that didn't fall in line with the rest of the emails. The only thing I could think of was that the the Lead Generation Idea did appeal to a wider audience than those interested in surveys.

What can I take away from it all?

I'm going to keep leading with what is the strongest content, what I want to get the most clicks to. 

I can test putting a strong article on the bottom, forcing people to scroll through the rest of my information. It could potentially give me more clicks overall. I think I'd take a small part of my list to do this though.

I'm going to double up the links. When I included more links in my email, even though the "Cheap & Easy" article was hot, the overall number of clicks increased.

Got any ideas of your own? Love to hear them!

Comments

[Luke Humble]

Try creating a heat map of your email. I did this on my emails and it gave me a great insight into the areas of the email that generated the most clicks and was able to cater the design and layout of the emails to this information.
Also, tag your text links and image links differently as this will provide an insight into whether images or text generate the most clicks both in articles and surrounding them.

[JFuller]

Have you researched increased click-thru patterns related to positioning on the left, center or right frames of the templates (or web-sites), not just below or above the fold? That would be interesting info to know, if you haven't already addressed it somewhere previously. Thanks.

[Jon Bjork]

I really appreciate these email tips!

One thing I do is click on what I think the most interesting article will be to me, then I know that I'll see all the other articles in the right column on your blog page (this one). So I would think that would cause your email click-through counts to be lower, but you're still doing what really counts - getting us to your site!

[Heidi]

Appreciated your comments on BTF. However, if you use Vertical Response borders & templates, it's difficult to add links Above The Fold. Maybe you could have a border template that adds a top or side navigation bar for anchor tags and links back to our sites? Thanks for listening.

[JimmiP]

Try split testing your next piece. Segment your list into three parts with each article taking a turn in the lead position. You will learn whether it is position or content that gets the clicks. You may feel strongly about which article is your strongest but your readers could certainly surprise you!

[Mick P.]

I've found that if you include to many links...and/or drive them to landing pages, your click activity diminishes. The nice thing about our DMC (Digital Marketing Center) is we can even track 'views/clicks' within the landing page.

So the strategy is to get them from the email to the more interactive/dynamic landing page...which can include embedded video, personalized flash presentation content, etc.

Microsoft is going to make it more and more difficult to publish any content within an email...(outside of text). We entice in the message and drive to landing pages. (One click)