We all want our recipients to open our email campaigns, right? But it’s what happens after the open we’re truly concerned about. We want our recipients to read our articles and take action whether it’s buying a product, service or donating to our cause. Here are ten easy actions you can take and put to work in your email marketing campaigns that might just get them clickin’.

1. More Links – Obviously you’ll link your call-to-action such as “Click Here”, but try linking your words within your article or pitch. You might find that people will respond better to more links.

2. Link Your Headlines – If you write a newsletter and you’ve got headlines for your articles, try linking the entire headline. If you sell a product link the product name.

3. Link Your Images – People are used to being taken somewhere when they click on an image. If you’ve got an image that relates to your product or cause, link it!

4. Include a Table of Contents – Let people get to the content they want to see fast by using anchor tags in your table of contents at the top of your email. There are however, issues with anchor tags not working properly for Outlook 2007 and a few other email clients so those who read their emails using these clients won’t be able to click.

5. Tease Them – Include half the story in your email and link off to the other half. Make sure in your link you tell them there is more to read. A good suggestion might be “Click to finish reading this fantastic article…” or something of that nature. Then on the page you direct them to, you can include offers that relate to your content.

6. Link Your Offer – If you’ve discounted a product make sure you link either the text or the image you use.

7. Free Gift – Give a free gift with purchase or donation, but only tell them what it is if they click on the link. Then you’ve got more real estate on the page to tell your story.

8. Give an Expiration Date – See how crazy Neiman Marcus went with their two-hour sale email. Make sure you link the date to where you want them to go.

9. Link to a Customer Video – Perhaps you’ve got a customer who made a video about your business. Why not link to it in your emails? Nothing sells you better than one of your customers plus your customer will tell all of his friends about it.

10. Personalize Your Links – If you’ve got a special offer, why not try including your recipients name in the link. “John, click here for your special discount” or “Stanley, click here to learn more about how you can save the Bay.”

The more clicks the better. Get linking!

© 2009 – 2013, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.