If you have content-rich emails such as newsletters with lots of text, anchor links can help you make it easy for your subscribers to scroll down or skip to content that they want to read. It’s really important to make your emails as easy as possible to navigate so you are always offering value to your readers. Anchor links help you to make this navigation easier. Let’s take a closer look at how anchor links help you improve your email marketing and what you need to know about how to create these links.

Applications and use cases for anchor links in email marketing:

The possibilities are endless when it comes to using anchor links. You just need to think about how it can help you enhance your email campaign experience.

Here is an example to illustrate how anchor links can be used. Lenny’s email is quite content-heavy and showcases 4 distinct articles and writers. Instead of asking a subscriber to scroll all the way down to the article or writer they want, they’ve used a clever bar at the top and used anchor links that direct the subscriber to the chosen part of the email.

How to create anchor links

Let’s get started.

The first thing you’ll want to do is log in to your Mail Blaze account and use your preferred template. For the purpose of this article, we’ll be using a specially designed template to illustrate how to add your anchor links.

Step 1: Let’s create our email template

To illustrate how you can use anchor links, we’ve used one of our predesigned templates called Greetings.

Step 2: Choose a name for your anchor link and add it to your structures

We’re going to add an anchor link to each mini section of this email to make sure a subscriber can quickly click on the part of the email they are interested in. The anchors will correspond with the main menu that’s been added to the email.

Navigate to the content Tab and choose the content block that contains the text you want to use as anchors. Make sure you’ve added all the text you want.

Once you have created your “menu” you can now click on the structure where the anchor is going to link to. In the below screenshot, you’ll see we have clicked on the Event Structure. Once you select the structure you’ll be able to give the section a name. You will find your structure settings under the STRUCTURE tab within the builder

Continue to create names for all your anchors in your campaign.

Step 4: Link your anchor

Now that you’ve created a specified position for your anchor you need to link the text in the header or menu like in the example we’ve created. Select the text you want to link to (in our example it will be “Attractions”) and now choose insert link.

You will see that you can now choose your Link Type and select the Link to anchor in text option. Once you’ve done this; all your added structure names will show, which means you are able to easily go ahead and create your links.

Pick the anchor name and select OK.

Step 6: Do extensive testing

You’ll see that the links are now added. We’ve opted to keep underline styling on the links to make sure that our readers know that they can click on the links.

Now that you’ve placed all your anchor links you’ll want to send yourself a test email so you can make sure all your anchor links work properly.

MAIL BLAZE TIP: If you want to ensure that your reader can easily navigate back to the top, you can add an anchor link into sections of your email that directs them back to the main menu section. You could add text like “Back to Top”.

Which email clients support anchor links?

It’s important to understand that all email clients don’t support anchor links. Therefore you need to keep this in mind when you are deciding whether to use anchor links or not.

Let us know how you like to use anchor links in the comments below.