An Easy Way to Increase CTR by 55%?

An interesting SMB study recently released from GetResponse revealed up to a 55% increase in promotional email CTR if social media links were also present in the email.

In fact the more social media links you include, the higher the click through rate increases, according to the study.

3 social media icons or more: 11.20% average CTR

2 icons: 9.30% average CTR

1 icon: 8.7% average CTR

No icons: 7.20% average CTR

So going from no social media link icons (7.2% CTR) to adding 3 social media icon links (11.20% CTR) actually increases average click thru rates by 55%, again according to the study.

The study also found that when adding just one social media link:

Twitter offered the highest CTR: 10.2%

Facebook: 9.1%

MySpace: 8.7%

LinkedIn: 7.20%

Digg: 5.30%

(Hmmm...the fact that LinkedIn was so low tells me this study was likely from SMB B2C companies)

Also what the study didn’t mention was whether or not the increase in CTR was actually caused by recipients clicking the social media links themselves, thereby causing the uplift in CTR.

Either way, it seems to be a likely candidate to do some quick A/B testing yourself, especially since marketing automation vendors such as Eloqua provides such a easy way to add these icons to your emails.

I’d love to hear any metrics from any testing you do or have already done in this area.

Updated 5-8-12
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Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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