• by April Mullen , Columnist, March 23, 2017

We put a lot of focus on the click in the email conversion funnel — and for good reason.  When a click takes place, it means the email has done its job to compel the consumer to transition from the email to your Web site.  From there, the site does the work to help drive the actual conversion.  

By narrowly focusing on this process, though, email marketers have largely overlooked what a click can do.

Here are four ways to put a click to work for your brand:

Simple surveying. All brands do (or should) seek to gather feedback from customers via surveys.  When planning for a simple-one question survey, such as Net Promoter Score or a comparably simple question, leverage email clicks to collect this information.  You can put the question and show the possible responses as buttons within the email.  Make sure each link is tagged, so you can attribute clicks -- or, in this case, responses -- back to a specific customer record.  Just be sure to QA the email well to ensure that each link is tracking separately and that you’ve built in a landing experience that isn’t confusing.  A page that says, “Thank you for your feedback” with a CTA to engage in other parts of your site is a good way to handle this.  

Dynamic journey pathing. As brands move increasingly toward automation, they should leverage click behaviors to change the path a consumer will experience in journey orchestration.  Fluid and dynamic programs that change based on consumer behavior tend to perform better than rigid programs.  To execute, you can ask an overt question at a specific stage of a journey, such as what a customer would prefer to hear about next -- think “Choose Your Adventure.”   Another idea is to do a path change in a less overt way, based on the type of link clicked/not clicked, which may not be obvious to the consumer.    

Update customer profiles. With each click behavior comes a rich trail of data exhaust that you can leverage to enhance the profiles of your customers.  For example, let’s assume you have a customer that clicks on women’s clothing links multiple times within a short period of time.  Add women’s clothing to the customer’s profile and leverage that information to personalize his/her future emails.  

Drive purchase within email. While this process is not yet common -- and one you must use carefully -- you can sell from a click.  I wrote about payment apps that will probably make this possible at some point in “‘Omnicommerce’  About to Collapse Digital Conversion Funnel."

In the meantime, the click itself can serve as a commitment to buying something.  Barkbox recently sent me an email that allowed me to add an additional product to my monthly subscription box.  I clicked a link in the email to give permission for Barkbox to add this to my order, then the landing page thanked me and set the expectation that it would be added to my next delivery.  

If you leverage a click event to fulfill a purchase, though, I highly recommend you allow a customer to reverse that decision for an accidental click. You should also send a confirmation email to let the customer know about this purchase.  

I’m envisioning a similar experience to an order confirmation email after verbally telling Amazon Echo to order something.  The last thing you want is to fulfill orders that anger and cause a high volume of returns.  

What are some ways you’ve maximized click behavior to enhance your emails?  Let me know in the comments!