In my recent post on click through rates, I touched on the total number of clicks versus unique clicks in email communications and what the most recent industry statistics are. This post continues that conversation, but contains information on some reasons why your CTRs may be low.

If your email marketing campaigns are typically showing under 2-3% CTRs, some of the causes likely include:

• Poor permission or opt-in processes. This includes pre-checked boxes, not making it clear what type of email they will be receiving, automatically adding someone to receive your email marketing when they’ve actually signed up for something else such as a whitepaper, etc.
• Poorly written email subject lines that do not direct and motivate recipients to take an action.
• Poor email delivery rates. If a lot of your email messages are getting blocked or filtered and you don’t know it, your CTR will obviously be affected.
• Poor email open rates. If few people open your email, fewer recipients have a chance to click.
• Poor email design and layout. If they can’t easily find where to click through or aren’t motivated to by your layout – you’ve got trouble.
• Lack of links. Quite simply, the more links the better. Make it so that email readers are continuously stumbling over text and graphic links like they do signage in a retail store.
• No reason to click. If your email newsletter has a single or multiple articles in their entirety, then don’t expect them to click. You haven’t given them any reason. If you are sending a promotional email and you don’t include a deadline for the offer, or convey a discount, special offer, limited supply, etc., few people are probably going to take action.

Hopefully you found this information useful for your email marketing efforts. And for those of you who did read the entire article, we have a special treat for you…the answer to Willow’s first most frequently asked question…“so what’s the story behind the Willow tree?”

One of the most frequently asked questions at Willow is “so what’s the story behind the Willow tree?” Unfortunately, this blog post doesn’t answer that question. But it does address the second most frequently asked question at Willow, “What kind of click through rates (CTR) should we expect in our email marketing efforts?” Great question, especially since it relates directly to your clicks being converted to leads.

There really isn’t a national average or percentage that can be used with any accuracy. Why? Well, this is a bit of a loaded question since there are so many factors that come into play. Most of our efforts for clients are focused on a business-to-business target audience. Those rates can differ greatly from a consumer audience. But that’s simply the start…Is your list good? Have you segmented your list? Is your mailing personalized? What’s the offer? Is it relevant? How often have you sent to this audience?

But even more significant is how many links you do have in your email. Are you providing content such as articles? This can be the entire article within the body of the email or a teaser or snippet that requires email subscribers to click through to a website to read.

It’s important to understand the statistics your email marketing service provides in reports as well. Are you studying total click throughs versus unique clicks? Make sure you understand how the click through rates were calculated by your email marketing provider. Many recipients will click on multiple links placed in your email. This results in more clicks. Unique clicks are where only one click per person (or email address) is counted. CTR reports based on the total number of clicks versus unique clicks will be very different. If your report is based on total clicks, your numbers will be about two times higher than those based on unique clicks. At Willow, we study both, but benchmark a client’s history based on unique CTR’s.

Lyris is a leader in digital communications and has compiled some industry statistics that may be helpful to use as a guideline in your email marketing efforts. To follow are some averages click through rates based on unique clicks:

• Business to Business (B2B) email newsletters typically range from 5% to 15%. If your CTRs are consistently below that level then among other things, you are probably providing content of little value to your email subscribers. Or you may have most of the content within your email, not giving subscribers a reason or means to click through to your website.

• Business to Consumer (B2C) promotional email marketing campaigns often range from about 2% to 12%. Email campaigns with less than a 2% CTR may be a result of over mailing and questionable email opt-in processes.

• Highly segmented and personalized email lists (B2B and B2C) are often in the 10% to 20% CTR range. Also, email messages with very strong content but sent to unsegmented lists, like many news or trend-type e-newsletters, are often in the 10%-15% range.

• Trigger or behavior-based email campaigns (emails that are sent to recipients based on some behavior they showed, such as clicking on a product link, coupon, visiting a specific web page, etc.) are often in the 15% to 50% range.

So now you’ve seen a few guidelines on how to enhance your email marketing efforts. Be sure to check back and read Part 2 to find out reasons why your CTRs may be low. You may also have the chance to find out the answer of the infamous Willow tree question…

Recently SmashingMagazine.com held a coffee mug photo contest. The link reports that around 470 mugs were entered into the contest. With the weather getting colder, my coffee addiction continues to grow, so of course this was of interest to me. {Coffee + Photography= Happiness} While scrolling through some of the top entries, the following occurred to me. If a typical, boring object such as a coffee mug can be put in such an interesting light, enough so as to create a photo contest and be a top story on a major design blog, it really is all about the perspective. The angles, coloring, treatments & effects, the complete composition of the photos were what made a typical coffee cup something photo-worthy. Willow can do the same for you. No matter your product, purpose, or intended goal, we can help you define your perspective to make your company stand out and be something worthy of notice.

Do you know the difference between vector art and a pixel image? Unless you are a graphic designer, you probably don’t, but if you work in communications or marketing you should understand the difference between these two types of images.

Basically, there are two types of electronic image files: vector graphics —commonly used for logos, maps and stylized illustrations; and pixel (raster) images—generally these are photographic images or continuous-tone.

Vector images are created from points and lines to create a specific shape or design element. These elements are filled with color or tone.  A vector file is commonly created in design programs like Adobe Illustrator. Vector file extensions are EPS  or AI.

Pixel images use pixel or small dots of color to create an overall image.  Generally, any photograph that is in a digital format is a pixel image. Pixel images are governed by DPI (Dots Per Inch), the higher the DPI means more dots are used to create the image.  Images used on websites are generally 72 DPI (72 dots per inch), while images used in a traditionally printed brochure are 300 DPI or larger (300 dots per inch).  Usually, higher DPI images have greater detail than lower DPI images. There are many file extension options for a pixel/raster image, the most common are JPG or TIF.

The benefit of vector art is that it can be scaled to any size, from a small graphic used on a business card to a gigantic graphic on a billboard, without any loss of detail or quality.

A pixel image, since it is made up of thousands of dots cannot be resized to such dramatic proportions and yield crisp and clean reproduction. When you drastically enlarge a pixel image, it often becomes blurry, loses detail and may have jagged edges. Generally, you can enlarge a pixel image 20% without noticeably affecting the image quality.

A vector image can also be converted or saved as a pixel file—but a pixel file cannot be saved as a vector file. It must be recreated using a vector-based application.

Now you know the basic differences between vector art and pixel images. If you have any further questions, just ask a one of our graphic designers in the comments area below. We’d be happy to help you out!

The pesky little f-word, “future”– it’s the deal-breaker word in relationship talks, an annoying subject of conversation for high school seniors, and an avoid-at-all-costs topic for college seniors. But, what does this f-word hold for Willow Marketing? In a recent activity, Willow Shrubs chose “innovative” as one of the key words for our future. But what does being innovative entail?

Referencing the “9 Ways to Keep Innovation Alive in your Marketing Organization,” I have observed many of these suggestions already in place here at Willow.

- Teamwork: If teamwork is synonymous with “collaboration,” then it is a word used here daily. For further evidential support, please reference my previous blog post on Thunder & Lightning: A Lesson on Brainstorming.

The Willow Collaboration Crock

- Interest in marketing trends: Daily “Read this cool article I found!” emails throughout the office exemplify Willow Shrubs’ interest in their very occupation, and that we do not shy away from what is new, different and dare I say it? Innovative.
- Contributions from all: I am proof of this, as I have had the opportunity to put in my two cents on many occasions the past couple months.
- Cross-train: As every good athlete knows, cross training is key to improving your main event. Be it “dryland” training for swimmers, our webbies being in the know about account activities, our designers giving a Printing 101 workshop to all, or the open forum streaming between our webbies and designers each answering the other team’s question of “How’d they do that?!” We each learn outside our bubble thus improving our in-bubble successes.

Do these suggestions spell an innovative future for Willow? What does it mean to be innovative? And, an easy one, what does the future hold?