More Text, Fewer Buttons Works in Email Marketing
Text is better.
If you’re like most retailers, the links that perform best in your emails are often text links.
In fact, the links that often perform the best in retail emails are those in the top navigation. These are the links from the navigation bar from your browsing website that say “Women” or “Men” or “Apparel”.
For email designers and marketers it is frustrating to see the statistic that support this outcome.
Why are customers simply clicking on these text links?
The answer is quite simple and it’s an interesting note you can take as you continue creating those retail marketing emails.
More Text Links in Emails for Greater Success
Text links work well in emails.
The reason, especially if your target customer is of an older demographic, is because text links are common. People are used to seeing text links. They know what the purpose of a text link is. They are comfortable clicking a text link.
The Internet is still a game of trust for a good part of the consumer market. People still have trust issues when it comes to clicking on anything. If you’ve ever looked at your website analytics you have probably noticed that people still type in keywords such as “yourcompany.com” into a search engine like Google.
This is because the person doesn’t trust going directly to the URL. They want the search engine to screen the result first.
The same trust issue exists with links. People are becoming more familiar with buttons and images, but good old text links still perform better. It’s about trust and the psychology of email marketing shows that people will trust your email more if you include simple, even downright regular emails.
Fossil
Big Image, Text Links
Fossil is one of my personal favorite brands. I think they’re doing some interesting things with Web design. I also think they’re doing a great job with their email marketing.
Here we have one of Fossil’s recent emails. Notice the large product photography. It’s a great way to entice their target customer to like the new watches. Yet there is no real direction to click on the image.
Options for clicking are really the top navigation: “Women”, “Men”, “Watches”, etc. Or a person could click on that little text link in the bottom left hand corner. The text that reads “Shop Utility Waches”. This link is appealing to most people. It’s something a person can trust and feel comfortable clicking on through to the website.
Ebay
Great Text Links in the Footer
Ebay is one of the most successful online retailers of our time. They usually do things right when it comes to online marketing. I think they also do email marketing fairly well. This screen capture is actually a bottom portion of one of their recent emails. I like this image because of all the text link options for viewers to click. The products near the top of the image have the same look as the text links on the Ebay website. You can bet customers viewing this email would be comfortable clicking on those.
Amazon
Only a Few Text Links
Amazon is always the leader at figuring out Website optimization. They rarely make any change without it being calculated and sure to increase clickthroughs and conversions. Amazon recently changed their website. There is less color on the site, except for the product images, and the text links are still prominent. You’ll notice the See more text link near the top of this email image capture. People still relate underlined text as a link and it reminds them that it’s safe to click here.
People will slowly become used to clicking on images on websites and emails.
However, people still trust text links in both areas of online design. It’s necessary to still cater to your customer demographic and earn their trust with your designs.
To improve clicks and performance, consider more text links in your emails and fewer buttons.