Marketing communications and Email communications professionals seeking to improve their click through rates should take a look at the latest research from Forrester Research.

The report advises that relevance of communications is key to achieving click through rates, saying that consumers are persuaded to open emails by their personal interests more than any other factor. Forrester say that this applies across the generations and sexes.

Brand and company reputation play a key role according to the report and this factor sits just behind relevance. This may seem to suggest that if you brand lacks mind share with the customer then it is unlikely that you will yield a result from email marketing.

The report states that consumers spend less than 20 seconds deciding which emails to open and the report suggests that to grab consumers attention, it may not be the offer that motivates them but, the relevance of the communication overall. Tempting ‘Grab it’ offers may not be the definitive solution to email opening rates that many email marketers presume.

Excessive messaging is also highlighted as damaging factor and the report highlights one customer who doubled revenues through reducing the number of communications to the customer base.

The key here once again seems to be the need to research customers carefully and to absorb that knowledge into business practices. Learn from every communication with your customer to develop a conversation that drives relevance and value for that customer.

This also speaks for the value of multi-channel communications. Different channels have different merits so for example a direct mail  item will focus a customer in a different way to that of email.

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