3 Tricks for Getting More Email Clicks. Many marketers will tell you their engagement rates need to improve. Here’s how to not be one of them.

The way people interact with your emails tells you everything about your marketing strategy. Are you sending valuable content? You’ll see the feedback reflected in your open and click rates. Is your email list accurate? Your bounce rates, spam complaints and other metrics will show you. If those numbers aren’t making you happy, it’s in your power to improve them. 

To see where you stand, let’s take a look at industry benchmarks. These vary depending on the source, so it’s difficult to establish what the most precise data is. Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights published an in-depth study on the topic, gathering information from several email-service providers. Here’s what he found after analyzing hundreds of millions of sends:

• The average open rate, across all industries, varies from 14.79 percent (Constant Contact) to 21.33 percent (MailChimp).
• The average click-through rate ranges between 2.98 percent (Get Response) to 6.99 percent (Constant Contact).

There’s a significant difference between these numbers, but they should give you some perspective on how your own emails are performing. What can you do if your metrics are below these benchmarks, or if you want your email marketing to be even more effective? The below tactics will help you do just that.

1. Scrub your email lists.

Having had the chance to see firsthand how much list-cleaning helps, I can tell you that it’s a great place to start boosting your email engagement. We’ve had customers come to us with a 20 percent bounce rate, and after they validated their list, that rate went down to less than 1 percent.

Nick Dimitriou, the head of growth at email-marketing service Moosend, confirms how important email hygiene is. “While content and volume greatly influence your email deliverability,” Dimitriou told me, “the quality of your mailing list also has an impact. To increase engagement, verify whether your contacts are valid and deliverable, and do it regularly.”

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