Recipients want your emails, but the content may not always be specific to their needs. Learn how to use direct navigational links to bring customers to your website.

Email marketing, at the most basic level, is getting the right message to the right person at the right time. No matter what you are "selling," the message's purpose is to have the recipient recognize the sender, open the communication and respond accordingly.

In a perfect world, this happens for every campaign. But the reality is that your communication will reach some who might want to receive your messages but perhaps find the content is not specific to their immediate needs. What happens next? Does your email have a "second life?"

Opportunities in email to grow web traffic
Let's take a look at your website. Nicely laid out, a full accoutrement of navigation links: special offers, profile update, contact us, shopping cart...you get the idea. You most likely review your top clicked links on your website. You see that email campaigns drive traffic back to your website, most likely through the linked logo you have at the top of the communication. What you may be missing are direct navigation links in your email communication that link back to your most popular pages on your website. As mentioned above, we all know that every email will not hit the right recipient at the right time with the right message. How do you give emails this second life, one that can drive the recipient back to your website?

If recipient X doesn't necessarily want to learn about your great widget sale, what else can he gleam from the communication in two or three seconds? You have already established a relationship with recipient X, who perhaps made a previous purchase and is familiar with your website. Let's give customer X an easy way to navigate back to the website to access the information that is desired.

Adding your most popular navigation links from your website within your email communication can do several things:

1. Show detailed results (by way of link tracking) on how email affects traffic visits to your website.
   
   
2. Give your email that second life beyond the intended communication. Customer X doesn't need information regarding your widget sale, but your email did remind the customer that he had something in his shopping cart or there was another product/service he was interested in.
   
   
3. Depending on the scope of your website and organization, this in-message navigation can be helpful identifying opportunities for growth. If your links are structured by products, departments, customer service, etc., your active email recipients (your "clicking" customers) can tell you by the links they click on what is important to them and where you may want to focus your efforts for future campaigns and web development.
   
   
4. Testing navigation links in your communication can also help determine what links are most important for your customers receiving email versus those who are visiting from your web address.

Best practices:

• Review your web/link statistics from previous months. You most likely know what the most popular links on your website are. When possible, these links should be front and center in an easily identifiable navigation bar within your emails.
• Incorporate a simplified navigational bar in your email communications that represents your top three to five navigation links on your website. But use caution; too many links or a large navigation area will distract the recipient of the intented message.
• Using a similar layout, color scheme and fonts in your navigation area can help recipients quickly identify your existing branding. If they are not interested in your message, they can quickly determine what links they need to visit to get to where they want to go on your website.
  (Note: Some ISPs are now comparing the email communications from a sending domain to the website listed for that domain. This fuzzy logic comparison approach is yet another development in the ever changing world of email deliverability. There is even talk that these ISPs are looking at copy -- similarities between web/email -- links and images.)
• Follow best practices for HTML programming for successful rendering.
• If your website has several popular links, send test campaigns that sample different links to see what links perform the best in your email communications.
• You can also add an additional navigational section at the bottom of your email. Keep the additional links unobtrusive as to not distract from the unsubscribe link in your email.
• Email ROI can be tracked beyond the email communications. Using web tracking links can help you identify the paths recipients take through your website once they engage with your email communication.

Summary
Providing the most popular links to your website within your email campaign can and will increase traffic to your website. The purpose is to make it easier for your customer to navigate back to your website without having to open a browser window and type in an address. People are more likely to open future messages if they know and trust the sender. Providing these links also increases your customer touch points and helps grow your brand awareness with increased engagement with your company -- and an end result of additional sales. Email communications can have a "second (and very important) life."

Christopher Lovejoy  is account executive, strategic services, Premiere Global Services, eMarketing Solutions.