You’ve probably seen or at least heard how effective email marketing is when it comes to reaching customers directly and driving conversions.
That’s because you’re reaching out to an audience that voluntarily signed up to receive emails from you. Besides that, there are over 4 billion email users worldwide, which is around half the global population.
The numbers are also proof of the channel’s potency. As of 2023, most digital marketers reported an average email open rate of 46-50% and an average email click-through rate (CTR) of 2.6-3%. The average CTR is even higher than social media’s 1.36%.
Now, there is a big chance that these promising statistics have led you to our post. We won’t disappoint. In this article, we’ll comprehensively discuss eight key strategies you should implement to boost your email traffic organically. Let’s get started!
What is Email Traffic?
Email traffic refers to the number of visitors or users directed to a website or specific landing pages as a result of their interaction with email communications. This interaction typically involves clicking through links provided in these email marketing campaigns.
You can measure email traffic through metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates. If you monitor email traffic, you can gain valuable insights into how successful your email marketing strategies are.
Sources of Email Traffic
Email traffic can come from different sources. Let’s break those sources down:
Organic Traffic
This is the category of visitors who discover your website through unpaid channels. This could be individuals actively seeking information on search engines.
This form of website traffic is valued as it signifies genuine interest and engagement from users who find your content compelling, even without promotion.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic refers to visitors who are directed to your site through paid advertising efforts. For instance, people who click on a Facebook ad that promotes your blog post are considered paid traffic.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic to your site is driven by recommendations and links from external sources. These sources could be social media platforms, guest posts, or other collaborative partnerships with industry experts.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic refers to users who go to your site by typing its URL directly on their browsers. People using a bookmark to access a site are also considered direct traffic.
To convert these different types of traffic into email traffic, you need to get them to sign up for your email list in the first place.
Strategies for Skyrocketing Your Email Traffic
Now let’s explore the strategies that will elevate your email traffic organically. While it’s not an exhaustive list of all the strategies, we’ll cover the key ones you can’t ignore.
Build Quality Email List
To generate email traffic, you need subscribers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. They won’t click on your email link and go to your site if your email content doesn’t interest them in the first place.
So, while building a high-quality email list requires patience and a strategic approach, the benefits are substantial. It sets the stage for not just a high boost in email traffic but, ultimately, a successful email marketing campaign. A high-quality email list typically leads to lower bounce and unsubscribe rates.
So how do you build a high-quality email list organically?
The key factor is getting explicit consent from users. So, implement a clear and ethical opt-in strategy to ensure that subscribers actually want to receive your content. For the best results, use the double opt-in tactic. The tactic requires users to confirm their subscription to an email list on another email, as shown below, or a landing page.
But that’s not all. You’ll need to offer relevant lead magnets from the get-go as well. Whether it’s exclusive content, ebooks, or templates, your lead magnet should be able to filter out the people who lack interest in your product but are willing to give you their email addresses just to avail of your incentive. These people will probably ignore your emails as soon as they get a hold of your lead magnet.
For example, if you’re a company that sells scheduling software, your target subscribers should be business owners or managers since they’re the ones who will likely buy your product and, therefore, also engage with your emails. So, don’t offer a generic lead magnet, like an Amazon gift card, if you don’t want random people in your subscribers’ list who are not interested in your product or content.
Do what ZoomShift did. To ensure a high-quality email list, it offers a free time schedule template in exchange for email addresses. This is an incentive only business owners and managers handling teams will be interested in.
You’ll need to regularly clean your email list to maintain its quality for better email marketing results by removing inactive subscribers. Also, make sure to include an unsubscribe button in the footer of your marketing emails.
Focus on Email Subject Lines
To get email traffic, you need your subscribers to open your emails in the first place.
Did you know that 47% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line? Moreover, 69% of the recipients will also report email as spam based solely on the subject line. This shows you just how important a strong email subject line is.
To create a strong subject line, follow these tips:
- Optimize: To optimize your email subject line, ensure you strike a balance between creating a sense of intrigue and clarity. Leave just enough unsaid to pique interest and encourage readers to open your email. However, ensure the subject line communicates what your email is about and aligns with your email content.
Misleading or clickbait subject lines may work the first time, but they will plant distrust amongst your email subscribers leading to lower open rates.
- Personalize: Statistics show that personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. You personalize your subject lines by incorporating the recipient’s name or tailored content suggestions, as shown below, to create a personal connection. Doing this shows you value your subscribers, enhancing the likelihood of the email being opened.
- Add a sense of urgency or exclusivity: Whether it’s a limited-time offer or exclusive access, it encourages recipients to open the email promptly. This not only boosts email engagement but can also drive traffic to your website as users will take immediate action. Here’s a great example from Hulu:
There’s no guarantee a specific subject line will work, but you can find the perfect one for your emails by A/B testing the different variations and analyzing their impact on engagement. You can use AI tools to generate subject line ideas to test in the first place. While there are generative AI risks like AI hallucinations, these can be easily overcome with countermeasures such as fact-checking.
Craft Compelling Email Content
Your email content is one of the core elements that can help ensure you get email traffic. If your email content is boring, your subscribers won’t even bother to click on the link that takes them to your website.
Therefore, ensure you create content that captures readers’ attention and motivates recipients to explore further. Follow these tips to create compelling content:
Ensure Value
Compelling content must be valuable to your target audience. So, don’t just assume social media marketers, for instance, will love your emails because they’re about social media marketing. You must also understand every subscriber’s demographics, behavior, or past interactions to ensure your content resonates with them.
Think of it this way. Although everyone subscribed to your email list because they want to learn about social media marketing, some subscribers might prefer to read about Instagram, while others might opt for content about Facebook.
Leverage Storytelling
Storytelling also helps create emotional connections with your target audience, making your content memorable and inspiring action. Craft narratives that resonate with your brand and values, and create an immersive experience that goes beyond the transactional intent.
For instance, instead of just enumerating your product’s features and benefits, why not tell the story of how one person succeeded because of your product? Or tell them how the product was created in the first place, like Drizly did below:
Include Interactive Elements
Quizzes, clickable visuals, polls, and surveys like the one below can make your emails more engaging. Such interactive content not only encourages engagement but also extends the time recipients spend interacting with your email, increasing the possibility of clicks and conversions.
Don’t forget to incorporate user-generated content or testimonials as well. When you show what existing customers think of your brand, you create social proof that can influence other recipients to take desired actions.
Leverage Social Media and Other Channels
You should also take advantage of other marketing channels. As email marketers, the goal is to get more people to subscribe to your mailing list for potential email traffic.
So, you could post email sneak-peeks on social media to entice people to do just that. This was the approach author Julie Jones Ranson took. As a result, in four months, she nearly tripled the number of her subscribers!
You can also leverage your existing subscribers to promote your social posts about your email sneak-peeks. This way, you can entice the members of their own networks to subscribe as well. For this strategy to work, though, you need to make sure your subscribers follow you on your social platforms. This will help ensure they see your social posts in the first place.
So, send them a dedicated email reminding them of the social networks you’re on. Here’s how smoothly premium eyewear retailer Tens did it:
To get more subscribers, you can also use your own blog to promote your email campaigns. The blog post doesn’t necessarily have to aggressively promote your emails. Just find a way to incorporate them naturally into your blog content. See how Wix did it:
We’ll talk more about promoting email subscriptions later.
Implement Email Marketing Automation
Email marketing automation takes your campaigns to new heights by delivering timely, personalized, and relevant content without manual intervention.
Automation allows dynamic audience segmentation, which helps you create content that aligns with your subscribers’ preferences. The targeted content ensures that each email resonates with recipients, leading to higher click-through rates and more email traffic.
Send the right message at the right time to the right audience. In fact, let Sender do it for you.
Besides that, automated workflows seamlessly respond to user actions, ensuring targeted content and exemplary user journeys. So whether it’s a welcome series, drip campaigns, or personalized recommendations based on user behavior (more on this later), automation ensures that each email interaction is timely and relevant.
Integrating automation into your successful email marketing strategy doesn’t just streamline processes. It will also help cultivate a loyal audience that turns into active advocates who grow your organic email traffic through referrals.
Personalize Emails
Don’t just personalize your subject lines. Personalize your email body, too.
These personalized messages are a great way to boost your email marketing efforts and email engagement. They make your audience feel seen, valued and understood.
Personalized emails go beyond just addressing recipients by their first name. You can leverage customer data to provide personalized product recommendations. Analyze users’ past interactions and purchase history to suggest products that align with their preferences. See how Forever21 does this:
Just from the email headline, you can tell that it’s a product the recipient liked or even purchased before. Besides that, optimize your email sending times based on each recipient’s time zone to ensure they receive messages at the most convenient moments. Additionally, include location-specific content or offers to create a localized and personalized touch to boost your emails’ relatability.
You can also use dynamic content blocks within emails to tailor certain email sections based on specific criteria like a subscriber’s behavior. Grammarly, for instance, sends users their own writing stats after a period of time.
Google Maps Timeline newsletters follow the same strategy. The personal map helps readers remember the routes they’ve taken based on their location history. Another option is to create a personalized round-up of emails, similar to Spotify Wrapped. This can be a monthly or weekly review.
By showing different customer segments different products, copy, visuals, or even CTAs, you ensure each recipient receives a customized experience.
Promote Email Subscriptions on Multiple Channels
Promote your email subscriptions across multiple platforms. Remember, the larger your audience is, the higher the chances you’ll get more subscribers. The result is potentially more email traffic. Apart from your typical social media and blog posts (remember our Wix example above?), here are channels you can leverage for this type of promotion:
- Online events like educational panels: Attend online events related to your industry to share valuable insights and promote your email subscriptions. You can include subscription links in event materials or ask attendees to sign up at the end. This is where digital business cards come in hand, as they are customizable and allow you to add contact details along with links to your subscription page.
- Other parts of your website: Strategically place email subscription forms through website pop-ups, banners, or embedded forms on key pages apart from your blog posts to capture visitors’ attention. Footwear company AllBirds, for instance, has a sign-up form embedded into their homepage:
- In-person events like trade shows: Who says you can only promote email subscriptions online? In-person events can serve as great promotional venues as well. You can have a poster or give out flyers with a QR code leading to the sign-up form for newsletter subscription.
You can offer incentives, like exclusive content or discounts, to encourage more sign-ups. Whatever channels you choose to use, remember the key is providing value and making the signup process as seamless as possible.
Ensure Good IP Deliverability
Your IP reputation is a measure of how trustworthy your IP address is. Why do you want a good IP reputation? Well, it ensures email deliverability. This is important since that’s the only way you can generate traffic via your email marketing campaigns. How will they click on your email links and go to your site if they don’t receive your emails in the first place?
To ensure a good IP reputation and deliverability, authenticate your domain using protocols like Sender Policy Framework, DomainKeys Identified Mails, and DMARC. These protocols help prove your legitimacy to the recipients’ server. With these measures, you tell Internet Service Providers that you’re not engaging in any malicious activity.
Ensure you also maintain a consistent sending pattern. Sudden spikes in email volume or erratic sending behavior can trigger alarms and also negatively impact your IP reputation. Before sending a lot of emails, make sure you warm up your IP. You can reach out to your email service provider so it can help you set everything up.
Key Takeaways
Growing email traffic organically is a daunting task since you must continuously find people genuinely interested in your brand or get their attention without the help of any paid channels. However, it is not impossible.
With the key strategies we’ve discussed, you can give a boost to your email marketing efforts and increase your email traffic exponentially:
- Build a quality email list;
- Focus on email subject lines;
- Craft compelling email content;
- Leverage social media and other channels;
- Implement email marketing automation;
- Personalize emails;
- Promote email subscriptions on multiple channels;
- Ensure good IP deliverability.
Implement them today and enjoy high web traffic from your email marketing campaigns at zero promotional costs.
Also read: How to Improve Shopify Email Open Rates?
Author Bio
Owen Jones is the Senior Content Marketer at ZoomShift, an online schedule maker app. He is an experienced SaaS marketer, specializing in content marketing, CRO, and FB advertising. He likes to share his knowledge with others to help them increase results.
