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Email marketing: how to use click-through data

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If you’re keen to expand your email marketing strategy, click-through data should be a key consideration. It provides a wealth of information to help you understand what customers want. A basic send out isn’t enough to capitalise on the many benefits of email – it’s just the beginning.

Unfortunately, many businesses don’t take advantage of email:

  • to drive more traffic to their website
  • to make them more money
  • to deliver excellent online customer service

I recommend you keep on track and learn from your click-through data. This will help you deliver more targeted email campaigns.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Why not create an email offer for popular click-throughs? For example, if you’ve identified a particular group of customers that like “handbags”, why not send them a brand-focused email offer?
  • If there’s a common pattern in the order of click-throughs to your emails, re-arrange future messages in order of interest. Customers generally scan emails. Capture their attention as quickly as possible.
  • Send follow-up emails based on click-through data. For example:

1. Create an automatic “thank you email” to send to customers following a purchase. Introduce the “customers who bought this item also bought…” concept pioneered by Amazon.

2. Identify segments of customers who don’t click through, and send them a “second chance email” offer.

3. Create a well-developed email subscription model to target your data collection and increase click-through rates.

4. Click-through data can provide enough information on customer interests to enable you to follow up with a phone call.

5. Consider sending an online survey to customers who click-through. You could offer a reasonable incentive such as a discount on their next order.

6. Don’t forget to say thank you to any customers who forward your email to a friend – it’s just plain good manners!

And where possible personalise your email. But don’t make customers feel as if you’re stalking them!

Don’t forget… when a customer clicks-though to an email it’s only the start of their online experience. As a first step, I recommend creating effective landing pages. Whether they form part of your website or specifically relate to your email link, landing pages are important to track where the customer goes next.

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