Mike Andrew Consulting

Social Media Links Improve Email CTR

By mike, Jun 25 in blog with 0 comments

Including social media links in promotional emails improves their click-through rate (CTR), according to a recent study from email marketing technology firm GetResponse.

Social Media Links Improve CTR 30%
GetResponse research indicates that on average, promotional emails sent by small-to-mid-sized business (SMB) marketers that include links to at least one social network have a 9.4% CTR. Meanwhile, promotional emails without any social network links have a 7.2% CTR. This means promotional emails including social network links generate an average CTR 30% higher than promotional emails without the links.

The More, The Merrier
Results of the study show that email messages with no social network links return an average 7.2% CTR, while email messages with one social network link returned an average 8.7% CTR. This CTR jumps to 9.3% for messages with two social network links, a roughly 7% increase from messages with one link and 29% increase from messages with no links.

In addition, messages with three or more social sharing links generated an 11.2% CTR, which is 20% higher than messages with two links, 28% higher than messages with one link and 55% higher than messages with no links.

Twitter Offers Best CTR
Broken down by specific social network, Twitter offers the highest CTR (10.2%), followed by Facebook (9.1%). Digg offers the lowest CTR of major social networks (5.3%), meaning messages with Twitter links are almost twice as effective at generating CTR as messages with Digg links, but only 12% more effective than messages with Facebook links.

Most SMB Marketers Don’t Use Social Media in Email
Despite demonstrated improvements in CTR, only a distinct minority of small-to-mid-sized-business (SMB) marketers use social media links or icons in their promotional emails, according to other study results from GetResponse. Data indicates that 18.7% of SMB marketers linked promotional emails to messages on their Twitter accounts. Another 13.5% included clickable sharing links to social media networks.

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.