If you are into email marketing then you would know that technically it’s not that email open rate is not important. It is, no matter what some Internet marketers think. No one can redeem your email offers if they don’t open the emails you send out in the first place. That’s pretty logical. However, with the prevalence of preview panes and the emergence of tools like Priority Inbox, the metric that gets email marketers salivating most is their email click-through rate otherwise referred to as CTR.

If you’ve been running your email marketing campaign for even a few months now then you probably have enough data to be able to anticipate the click-through rate of each of your email campaigns. After all, that’s what inbound marketing analytics is all about. However, this is a new year. The year 2012 and it’s time to start thinking big. How about you include on your New Year’s resolution list improving your email click-through rate to really give your CMO something to smile about.

If you are willing to do something about improving your email click-through rate but you are unsure about what you can do to promote your email campaigns then here are 8 ways in which you can improve your email marketing strategies. Remember that email marketing provides a prime opportunity for A/B testing. As such, you should employ it in all of your email marketing campaigns to ensure you’re always improving upon emails to get the most ROI possible.

8 things you want to improve on when it comes to your email campaigns

1. Test your subject lines

Believe it or not, the subject lines you choose to use for your email offers often have a lot to do with their click-through rates. For successful email marketing, you first need to get the recipients to click open your emails. Once you’ve nailed email deliverability, you should start A/B testing the subject lines you’re using until you master the expertise of writing click-worthy email subject lines.

2. Quantity is not important

Although many people tend to think that longer emails tend to perform better, when it comes to email marketing, this is not technically true. As far as you can, write shorter emails to increase the likelihood that the email recipients encounter your offer before getting bored and deleting the email altogether. When it comes to email marketing, being concise and getting to the point using as small a number of words as possible is a technique many Internet marketers fail to assimilate. Don’t be one of them.

3. Include in your emails social sharing options

Not so long ago, Econsultancy published results finding that emails, which contain at least one social sharing option, generate 30% higher click-through rates than emails without any social sharing links. That CTR also jumps to 55% higher when you include in the content you send out 3 or more social sharing options. Even if your readers don’t want to redeem your email’s offer, they might know a friend who does. Give them the opportunity to spread the word without having to go out of their way by including social sharing buttons in your emails. Then all you will have to do is sit back and watch your click-through rate soar.

4. Divide your email list into segments

An email marketing strategy often neglected by Internet marketers, email list segmentation prevents you from annoying your email recipients with irrelevant offers. In addition to that, list segmentation also lets you provide a more targeted offer, increasing the likelihood that your reader will click through. As a matter of fact, according to email marketing statistics, research shows that marketers who segment their email list enjoy 18% more transactions, 24% more sales leads, and 24% greater revenue.

5. Keep your content targeted

To present targeted content to your audience, list segmentation is absolutely crucial. This is because when you send out content, you want to know who you are sending it to and whether or not these people have any interest in what you have to offer. For profitable email marketing, you want your email offers to answer your recipients’ needs. It’s a no-brainer really. To receive more clicks with people redeeming your offers, you want to send the offers to people who actually need them.

6. Personalize your emails

To improve your email campaigns, you have to give your recipients some credit. You have to assume that they have a brain, which is functional. To further target your list and the content in your email, include in the content you send out elements of personalization. Part of effective lead nurturing is knowing about your prospects’ and customers’ purchase history, download history, satisfaction score, and website activity. This will allow you to provide the most relevant offers that will receive more click-throughs due to the targeted nature of your emails.

7. Do not include distractions in your emails

Just like when you are crafting your landing pages, it’s important to remove distractions from your email templates. Resist the urge to include a header that includes a navigation option to website or to include multiple offers in a single email with the hope that at least something in the email will compel readers to click. In reality, this is nothing but a sure signal that your email doesn’t have a specific enough goal. Step back, and consider the objective of each of the emails you send out. What is the one thing that you want the recipients of your email to do? If your goal is to get more Facebook fans with a particular email, then that’s what you should write about and that’s the call-to-action you should highlight in your email.

8. Improve your calls-to-action

No matter how tired you are when writing an email that you intend to send out to your email list, never fail to ensure that your call-to-action is above the fold, bright, bold, and impossible to miss. Do not assume that your reader is dumb. If you land on a dumb person then lucky you but as far as you can, you want to write emails to cover the worst-case scenarios. If you make your reader think by forcing them to scroll all the way down to the very last line of your email, hunt for your call-to-action, or question what they’re supposed to do then you can bet you won’t receive a click-through. Instead, you’ll get sent straight to the Trash and that’s not where you want to land.