Make All Of Your Clicks Count

You spend your valuable time creating your email marketing campaign, you load it with images, text and links, but where do you send your clickers? Hopefully not a black hole where they don't really know what to do! Let's take a look at 4 places that you are probably sending your clickers to and what you could do better.

Your E-commerce Site

If you're selling a product, the worst thing you can do is send your clickers to your home page. Why? You want to get them to the specific product page fast since that's what they're really interested in. If they have to search for the product they're interested in it could result in them being frustrated and potentially leaving your site.

Also, put as much information about your product on the page you send them to. Having them click to another page to get even more info is unnecessary and can be frustrating for them. If you do have lots of images you might want to try using thumbnails that they can scroll over to enlarge so that the page isn't so long.

Your Website

Websites can get out of control over a period of time can't they? You keep adding pages and pages. So it's better to be very specific when sending anyone there. If you've got a press release or you want them to download a white paper, fill out a form, or watch a video, make sure you send them right to the specific pages on your site that host these things. In general, people don't have the time or the patience to weave through your site to find them.

Your Blog

If a recipient clicks on a link to read the rest of a story and is directed to the front page of your blog where they may have to scroll to find the story, you'll likely get a frustrated reader. Even if your current story is at the top the day you sent your email, your reader might not read your email for a few days. In the meantime you might do another blog post forcing the post they want to read down the page.

I understand that you may want them to see other things on your blog, but don't worry, people will look around if they're interested. So send them to the 'permalink' of your post, it is the permanent link to where that post will always be.

Your Landing Page

If you send them to a landing page that is specific to the product you want them to buy or the story you want them to read, that's great! The benefit of you doing this is that you can test things on that page like placement of image, or copy to see what gets the best results. Then if that test results in you getting more products purchased, change your page for the better!

Analyze

If you have Google Analytics (free) or another web analytics program installed on your ecommerce site, your blog or your landing pages, that's a step in the right direction. As a side note, VerticalResponse has an integration with Google Analytics that takes analyzing email campaign clicks a few steps further. You'll be able to track where else people go from your email campaigns all over your site, blog or landing pages. Then you'll see what type of content they're really interested in and you could put it to work in your next email marketing campaign.

Comments

[Sara Martin]

i agree with Cheryl that twitter has taught us to make our information precise and to the point.. Clickers don't have enough patience either you want them to read a post or buy a product unless you literally redirect them to their desired information.

[Tom K]

With a large ecommerce site, it is not always a easy thing to point our "clickers" to the right landing page, but I will keep trying!

[Cheryl Mahoney]

Thanks for this great post on how to make the best use of the clicks you receive. If the 140-character phenomenon of Twitter has taught us anything, it's that people want their information to be direct, immediate and easy to learn. I work with a nonprofit, UniversalGiving, and if I mention that we have an opportunity to donate a backpack of school supplies to a child in Guatemala, I try to make it a point to link directly to the page with that opportunity--because, as you note, no one wants to have to go hunting for the page they're interested in. I've noticed a growing trend of concern for quality, and I think that applies here too. A well-thought out campaign with direct links to the most pivotal and relevant pages is, in a sense, of higher quality than one which links only to the main page. It's about putting in the time to deliver a solid product, whether that's the item you're promoting, or the campaign you're promoting it with. Thanks for the good advice on how to make that quality campaign happen!

Best,
Cheryl Mahoney
cmahoney@universalgiving.org
www.universalgiving.org
@UniversalGiving