“I don’t care what CRM system you use, sooner or later it all comes down to the click rate,” said Charlie.

“I’ll go along with that for email marketing,” said Jan, for once not accompanied by her partner.

“It is just as important for landing pages,” said Ted, “In fact I’d say it’s more important there.”

“HOLD IT” I said, loud enough to stop the argument before it started.

“Let’s be sure we are all talking about the same thing before you guys get your imaginary knives out.

As I understand it you can have a click rate on a landing or squeeze page but usually a person gets there from a click on an e-mail. Right?”

“Yeah.” “Okay.” “Picky, picky, picky.”

 “So, first off they had to open the email,” Jan piped up. “There are a lot of things you can do to assure that happens including smart targeting and personalization and finding your way into the mindset of the reader,” she continued.

 Charlie, our resident number cruncher rode over her saying, “If it is a prospect e-mailing you’ll get anywhere from 4 to 15% to open it. With customers it will be higher, from say 10 to 35%.

Click rates are more important. They come when someone has decided to act. These are the numbers nobody likes but the reality is if you are going after prospects you can expect a click rate of 0.2 to 2% Customers will be higher from 2 to 7%.”

“That’s all well and good but the conversions are what put funds in the bank,” I said.

 “Which is why the click rate on the landing page is the most important,“ Ted gloated.

Charlie couldn’t let that pass. He said, “And that is why they call it the conversion rate. If you have a clear call to action you should convert 20 to 35% of the people that finally get to our landing page.

In other words if you sent a well formulated email with an optimized subject line and landing page that connects with the call to action in the copy to 5000 strangers you could expect 10% or 500 to open it and 1% or 5 to click through and 3 to order.”

“Which is why or list is so important,” I pointed out. The same size e-mailing to people that know and trust you would generate a 25% open rate or 1250 and a reasonable click rate of 5% or 62 leading to purchases by 30% or 18 people.

And the better you know your clientele the better your click rate.”

Jerry Fletcher starts where the software stops. No matter how powerful your CRM system is you need to manage all the creative components of an e-mail campaign to get the best click rate you can. It is what he calls CRM Magic. Jerry’s consulting site is www.JerryFletcher.com He speaks as well: www.Networking Ninja.com