Sometimes our emails are focused on a single goal, aiming the entire message at driving to a specific landing page.

Other times when our purpose is more general, it makes a lot of sense to take a broader approach, aiming to get our subscribers back to nearly *anywhere* on our website. We can let them choose their own adventure from there, hoping they’ll eventually complete a site goal (e.g. ordering, membership sign up, etc.).

For those times, here are 3 techniques that could significantly boost your click through rates back to your website:

Include Some Website Navigation Links

If your site uses a navigation bar, most likely every page of your website contains those links in a predictable place, allowing visitors to select from at least a few things that might catch their interest, so why not experiment with adding them to your email newsletter?

Adding links to the most popular sections of your website in a consistent way across all messages might bring more overall traffic to your site.

As Chris Lovejoy points out, even if the specific topic of your newsletter doesn’t speak to someone, they may be interested in checking out more general (or specific) information section at your website.

Great tip, and definitely worth a split test.

Link More of Your Text

It’s called “the web” for a reason. Most websites aren’t structured hierarchically or in a linear way where a single page leads to just one other page, which leads to another, and so on.

Instead, pages are linked together from one another in a web, where a single page can link to many others, and many others pages can link to a single one.

A single email can link to several pages in this same way.

Hyperlinking Contextual Words and Phrases

The -> Click here < - type of linking strategies have gone out of fashion in favor of more relevant and contextual approaches involving words and phrases found directly within the paragraphs of the content (often strategically placed).

You probably already do this to some extent on your web pages. Have you ever tried this out in your emails with your headings and paragraph text?

Link Your Images to Relevant Web Pages

This tip is like icing on the cake, and because plain text messages are just that — plain-text — it’s an option only available to those of us sending HTML versions of our newsletters.

If you are sending in HTML, take a look the images in your messages. Readers’ eyes are naturally drawn towards them, and often times, so are their mouse pointers.

So, the difference between them seeing a (non hyperlinked) or (hyperlinked) pointer can ultimately make a minor or sometimes a significant difference in the click through rates for your campaigns.

It is especially important to link your logo, which people tend to expect is directed to your homepage, whether its seen on your website or in your email.

Related Resources

The above tips are for the established newsletter sender who already has a regular flow of traffic to their website. Not there just yet? Here are a couple of Knowledge Base articles that could help you out:

How Can I Drive Traffic to My Website?

How Do I Put Links/URLs in Messages?

What Works Best For You?

Have you experimented with different tactics and strategies to drive traffic to your website using email marketing? I know I haven’t covered them all, so I hope you’ll join the discussion.

This has been bugging me for a while.

Before sending, I test our blog newsletters to Gmail, along with other popular clients (generally a smart thing to do).

By and large, the messages tend to look fine, outside of one detail that might seem minor to some but meaningful others who spend some time thinking about optimizing emails for best results.

Take a look at a few of the recent tests in my inbox and see if you notice what I’m seeing:

See what I mean? Here’s another view – what I see pop up from my task bar when I receive the tests:

To subscribers, the frequency of “AWeber” and “AWeber Logo” could be trance inducing…at best. At worst, I fear it bores our Gmail viewers (who comprise 15.3% of our active list at the moment) and could suppress our open rates.

Why does that text appear there? Well, we use a template that includes a logo and a header image, both of which we use ALT text for (another good idea).

Meanwhile, Gmail displays whatever the first set number of characters appear in an email (alt text or otherwise) in this brief preview section of the inbox or Notifier app.

What Can We Do About It?

Get a free Gmail account for testing, if you don’t already have one, and send yourself tests of your messages. Do you see the same type of undesirable results?

Whether it’s ALT text or some other headline, it’s a good idea to replace it with something more enticing to subscribers to give them something worthwhile during that split second decision that makes them want to open the message rather than ignore or delete it.

You could tweak the layout of your template, or add some visible text at the very top of your message, but I did something else to avoid messing with the design or content of our messages.

Use an Invisible Image to Say Something Meaningful

In the free image manipulation software we use at our office, the GIMP, I created an image 1×1 pixel in size with a transparent background. Placed in an email, this image effectively goes unseen.

I then uploaded this file to our website and placed it in our blog broadcast template, just beneath the opening “body” tag, to make it the first thing Google “sees” to render in the email:

Remember how Gmail was pulling text from the ALT tags of our top placed images to my chagrin? Well, I found a way to use it to our advantage.

I simply added some ALT text to the image attribute that made more sense for the message I was sending out:

The result? Something much more appealing in the inbox and in the notifier. Check it out:

You can take the same image I used and upload it to your website. Just add the following HTML just beneath the “body” tags like I did:

<img src=”address where you uploaded the file to your site” alt=”text you’d like to appear after the subject line of your message”/>

What Were the Results?

To be honest, I didn’t split test this before implementing. Why? My feeling was that it was one of those limited things worth implementing straight off the bat without testing, but I’m willing to bet it will help our opens given the number of Gmail subscribers we (and presumably you) have.

I hope it helps some of you to engage your Gmail subscribers better. I’m happy because, at very least, I can stop griping about the way it looks when I test.

After ripping apart some poor email examples, I think it’s high time we point out someone who’s doing an email newsletter right.

I’ve been getting emails from travel planning site Kayak.com for a couple weeks. In each issue I’m impressed by their email savvy, from content to design to the little extras that make me so likely to use them to plan my trips.

Why do I like Kayak’s emails — both as an email marketing guy and as a subscriber — so much?

Examples of Kayak’s Emails

Before we go any further, take a look at 2 issues of their email newsletter that I’ve received:

(Click the above images for full-size versions.)

What do you think of them? Here’s my take:

They Build a Relationship, Rather Than Going For the Hard Sell

As a member of several frequent flyer programs, I get emails from a number of airlines. I also get emails from time to time from other travel sites where I’m a member.

I’ve never received an email campaign from any of them that tries to connect with me. They’re just so… all-sell, all-the-time, all about price.

Kayak, on the other hand, doesn’t scream at me about the latest deals.

Their emails sell the idea of traveling. Each section gets me excited about a destination, as if the emails were made up of postcards from friends who were visiting each place.

And even though I’m not usually looking to go anywhere, I often click through just to see what it might cost to take a trip. Just for fun (when was the last time your email campaign had subscribers going to your website just for fun? Try it.).

They’re Well-Designed and Easy To Read

This is exactly the kind of email that comes to mind (for me) when someone asks for an example of a “Light HTML” email message.

They cleverly separate each section with a header (the destination name).

They provide navigation at the top of the email to each section/destination, and each section has a link back to the top.

Navigation is text, not images, so it’s even useful with images disabled.

They distinguish their own content from sponsored content/ads by using lightly shaded backgrounds. Interspersing shaded sections with the main content also makes the email seem shorter than it actually is.

They put their logo in the upper left-hand corner of the email, so it appears in the preview pane, and they keep it small enough that it doesn’t get in the way of other content at the top of the email.

They’re Targeted To Me

And oh boy, is it easy to see what a trip might cost.

Did you see what they did in the sidebar? They put links to “cheap flights from Philadelphia.”

When I signed up they asked me what my home airport was, and they’re using that to get me from reading their email to making a purchase. The links even go to a flight search page that’s pre-filled with Philadelphia as the departing airport.

With what is really just basic segmentation and personalization — nothing difficult or complex — Kayak makes a smooth transition from inbox to web.

They Encourage Communication

Look at the footer of the email.

Rather than hiding behind a “do not reply” type of address and using email as a way to talk at me, they tell me they want to hear from me!

What’s especially great about this is they give me multiple ways to contact them:

The link in their email goes to a feedback form on their site.

Unlike the company in our email footer example a while back, they send from an email address that forwards to their help desk, so even if I reply instead of using their feedback form, I can still get in touch with them.

Anything Else?

I feel like I’m rambling a bit here, so I’ll turn it over to you.

What did you like about these emails?

Or didn’t you like them (and if so, why not)?

How do you feel you can apply these tactics to your own email marketing campaigns?

Share your thoughts on the blog!

MarketingSherpa announced their 2008 Email Award winners recently.

These are always a great place to look for innovative ideas as well as proven/tested tactics that you can use to improve your own email marketing campaigns.

Out of all the award-winning emails they present (and there are a lot!), I was particularly drawn to the best automated/autoresponder series category.

Let’s take a look at what’s working well for companies running autoresponder series…

Successful Autoresponder Campaign Trends

In reading through MarketingSherpa’s writeup of each winner and looking at the included samples, I noticed a few patterns among the successful campaigns:

Simple Design

Simplicity was a recurring theme in many of the successful campaigns Sherpa profiled, whether on landing pages or in the emails themselves.

GMAC Mortgage had a particularly compelling design that, while simple (it looked to me like a personal letter sent by postal mail on company stationery) incorporated some nice, simple design elements such as their logo and a picture of the mortgage agent. A great example of “Light HTML.”

Short or Long Copy Can Work

Sherpa’s winners included both shorter, more image-heavy emails and longer, text-focused ones.

It seemed to me that short copy with more imagery worked especially well for direct promotions, while longer, text-heavy emails were more suited to educating and nurturing leads.

Freebies

Giving something away is still a great way to attract and engage subscribers.

Examples of winning uses of freebies included:

“Starter kit” with a series of whitepapers and a case study

Free trial/demo of a software

Sweepstakes entry in exchange for customer feedback on a recent purchase

Include Site Navigation In Emails

Many, if not most, of the winners included some sort of site navigation in the emails, such as links to a homepage, “My Account”/login page or useful tools on their sites.

This can help to raise response because even if someone isn’t interested in your primary call to action, s/he may still be interested in visiting your site for something else (example: I may not want to purchase a product yet, but I might want to read your blog or use your pricing calculator).

It also can help to build recognition of your emails by including design elements that readers will remember from your website.

Try Using Buttons For Your Calls To Action

Several of the winners used image-based “buttons” for their calls to action.

Those with longer, more text-heavy emails also included text links to supplement the button, rather than taking an “either/or” approach to their calls to action.

Preview Panes: Give People Something To Do

As Sherpa’s winners showed us, putting some kind of action near the top of your emails can yield positive results.

Examples of this include:

Site navigation links

Link to an online version of your email

Your primary call to action

A secondary call to action, such as driving the user to a helpful resource on your site.

See the Winning Campaigns For Yourself

To see all the results, head over to MarketingSherpa’s site.

Videos are a great marketing tool — they your prospects’ attention, they let you show (not just tell) about your products, and they get passed around (helping you to get more subscribers virally).

However, as many people have found out, creating "video emails" by embedding the video directly in an HTML email (like you would on a web page) doesn’t fly. It’s simply not reliable because most email programs disable or strip out the video.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of video’s appeal in your emails!

You just have to get a bit creative…

Easily Send "Video Emails" Using Image Links

In a recent addition to our Knowledge Base, we’ve shown step-by-step how to drive your email subscribers to watch videos that you’ve posted to your site or video hosting sites like YouTube.

How Can I Add Video To My Messages?

A Couple Pointers

I recommend using an image to link to your video — you can use text, too, but the image will naturally draw the eye and increase your response.

That said, not all of your subscribers will have images enabled in their email programs.

So, remember to put appropriate ALT text for your image, so that if they have images turned off, they know there’s a video to click to.

Example:

Have You Used This Tactic?

Has linking to videos this way worked well for you? Have you learned anything along the way that you think our readers could benefit from when creating their own video emails?

Share your thoughts!

RSS Subscribers: Here’s a permalink to pass along to others you think would benefit from this tip!

As an individual? Probably not much. But as a marketing example, possibly quite a bit.

A couple months ago, we posted about a possible compromise in the Text vs. HTML debate.

Inspired by a MarketingExperiments study on formatting, we discussed the idea that not all HTML was created equal, and that you might improve response by using a “Lite” (or if you prefer, “Text-y”) HTML — taking some advantage of HTML’s formatting flexibility while preserving much of the overall simplicity of Text.

A great example of this just popped up on my radar.

Just when you think a hotly-debated topic like whether to send messages in plain text or HTML has died down, along comes another angle to look at.

This time, the folks at MarketingSherpa bring us a case study from minor-league baseball where a combination of Text AND HTML messages boosted ticket sales over 260%.

So how do you incorporate this new data into your decision to use Text or HTML?

We field a lot of questions from customers about the pros and cons of using HTML in your messages.

Like them, you may not know the major pros and cons of sending a multipart message (Text/HTML) versus sending text-only emails.

There are a lot advocates on both sides of the fence when it comes to Text and HTML.

In my experience everybody tends to focus only on the pros of what they do, and the cons of what they don’t. You rarely get a balanced view.

So… right here, today, let’s size ‘em up:

Text. HTML. Toe to Toe in the Ring.

Somebody get Don King on the line.

Read More on the AWeber Blog

HTML messages offer several advantages to senders:

* they can be customized to include colors, formatted text and tables
* they enable the sender to track message open rates
* they allow the sender to hyperlink words and phrases rather than typing out full URLs

However, many email programs by default block HTML images from being displayed, including the following popular software and web-based email clients:

Often times when working with customers on their message campaigns, I notice they are including only HTML versions of their messages to their subscribers, with no plain text version. I politely bite my lip while I work with them on whatever issue they’ve called in for, then in an attempt to be as helpful as I can, I point a few things out to them about this…