One Simple Practice to Increase CTR up to 700%

Most demand gen professionals and email marketers are consumed with iterative testing to improve the performance of their marketing efforts. I follow the same practice, of course, and over the past ten years of email testing I have found one simple practice that immediately improves click-through rate (CTR) for literally every email tested. Better than knowing this practice, however, let me first share how I discovered it.

After tiring of the small, incremental gains of 1 to 3% using iterative testing, I began a practice of hypothesis-based testing about eight years ago. It is simply applying scientific method to the practice of email deployment. These single-blind tests (the user was unaware of the test or which version of the test they received) led to some amazing increases in both web site and email performance. In this case, I began with the hypothesis:

I believe email readers will do what they are told to do.

Despite studies at the time indicating the best practice was use of graphics-heavy HTML emails, I believed that users would react better to not having to search for a button or guess what the button would do if clicked. My hypothesis extended to placing a text link for the Call to Action (CTA) at or near the end of the first paragraph of the email body copy, as shown here:

Over the course of hundreds of tests, this CTA has proved to consistently outperform any other link location or method from 35% up to 700%. Yes, it outperformed that big, red “Learn More” button and both text links in the right-hand column.

Of course, you need to avoid SPAM trap wording like “Click Here,” but other action words like download, join and discover work very well. A few, simple guidelines:

•  Write your link in plain English and let the language flow naturally from your copy – don’t try to force something that doesn’t fit.
• Make sure your text link is well above the fold.
• Of course, your CTA needs to be relevant and compelling to your audience. Don’t expect this (or any) best practice to compensate for an irrelevant or uncompelling offer.

So go ahead and hypothesize, test and repeat. And respond back to this blog when you have results. I’d love to hear about them!

© 2011, Stephen D. Turley. All rights reserved.