How to Add Navigation Links to Your Marketing E-Mails

Customer Analytics For Dummies

Navigation links in web marketing e-mails are HTML links that allow your audience to jump to visual anchors within the body of your e-mail. If your e-mails have one or more headlines or bodies of content that your audience has to scroll to for viewing, you can include navigation links in your e-mail to

Highlight the content that your audience can’t see immediately.
Allow your audience to access the information by clicking a link instead of scrolling.

You can also include links to your website to allow your audience to jump from your e-mail to specific content on your website.

Navigation links are actually anchor links in HTML. Anchor links are HTML tags that reference a specific portion of content within an HTML document and automatically scroll the browser to the top of the referenced content when clicked.

To create an anchor link, you have to create a name for the anchor using an anchor tag and place the anchor in your website code at the beginning of the content you want to link to. Then you add a link in your e-mail text that points to the anchor.

Using your HTML or website editor of choice, follow these basic steps (the specifics depend on the editor you’re using):

Use an anchor tag to place your anchor, and include the name attribute to identify the anchor’s name.

Use the first word of the headline or section of content for the anchor name so that you can remember how to name your anchor link later.
- To set the anchor in text, include an anchor tag with a name attribute within your paragraph tags:
```
<a name="anchorname">headline or title
```
- To name an image as an anchor, include the name attribute within the image tag:
```
<img name="anchorname" src="http://www.emailtrainer.com/sample/image_file/imagename.jpg">
```
If you’re new to HTML, note that you should replace anchorname in the preceding examples with whatever name you’d like to use. Also, headline or title stands in for the text that actually appears on your site, and the URL in the preceding image tag also stands in for the location and filename of the image you want to use.
Create your anchor link by inserting the anchor tag in your HTML e-mail text, with the href attribute pointing to the anchor name you specify in Step 1, and preceded by a # character.
- To create a TOC link that scrolls to your anchor tag, use the following:
```
 <a href="#anchorname">TOC link text</a>
```
- To create a navigation link that scrolls to an anchor link on your website, use the following:
```
 <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/page.html#anchorname”>
 navigation link text</a>
```

Most EMPs allow you to create navigation links in your e-mails, and many include navigation links in basic e-mail template designs.

About This Article

About the book author:

John Arnold is a renowned marketing trainer and speaker as well as an entrepreneur and small business advisor. Arnold continues to train and advise small business owners as a Constant Contact regional development director.

Michael Becker is the managing director of North America at the Mobile Marketing Association. Becker has written more than 80 articles on mobile marketing and is an adjunct professor of mobile marketing at Golden Gate University.

Marty Dickinson is the president of HereNextYear.com, a company that combines writing, speaking, and internet strategy to help clients become recognized authorities in their fields. Dickinson also works as a business consultant to web designers and SEO specialists.

Ian Lurie has been a digital marketer for over 25 years. He created and sold the digital agency Portent, Inc. and provides consulting and training services.

Elizabeth Marsten is the senior director of strategic marketplace services for Tinuiti. Marsten has experience in Google AdWords, Microsoft Ads, Amazon Advertising, Facebook, and other platforms.