9 business development cold email templates (and why they work)
Struggling with your cold outreach for business development? Discover 9 tactics (and templates) for effective business development emails.
Do you ever want to email someone a link without including a super long, annoying URL in your message? That’s what hyperlinks are for.
A hyperlink includes anchor text or a graphic that contains a URL and directs you to a webpage when you click on it.
You’ll typically recognize hyperlinks because they turn the “linkified” anchor text blue, although each site can specify the color of their hyperlinks. You’ll also find hyperlinks as images and buttons all over most websites (including several on this page).
Adding hyperlinks to emails makes it easier for your recipients to understand and reach the web pages you want them to view. Since a hyperlink is a word or image, your recipient better understands what to expect when they click on it.
Use this guide to learn how to hyperlink in Gmail, plus how to track audience engagement with your links.
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Using the desktop version is your best option to include a hyperlink in Gmail. Follow these steps:
In this example, “helpful article” will be the anchor text for the hyperlink. Choose a descriptive word or phrase that’s not too long (less than five words) so your audience knows in a split-second what the link is.
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If you want to add a hyperlink while using the Gmail mobile app on your phone or tablet, you have to use a somewhat convoluted workaround.
For whatever reason, Google doesn’t currently include a dedicated hyperlink feature in the Gmail mobile app. Here’s hoping they’ll add that option in an update sometime soon.
Until then, follow these steps on how to hyperlink in Gmail on the mobile app:
In this example, we used “super interesting post.” Try to come up with descriptive anchor text that sounds more natural than that in your emails!
If this whole process sounds frustrating and unnecessarily time-consuming, that’s because it is. We recommend drafting emails with hyperlinks on your desktop to avoid the hassle.
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A hyperlink doesn’t necessarily have to be text — sometimes, hyperlinking an image is the better option. Including images in your emails is a great way to capture your audience’s attention. Turn pictures into clickable hyperlinks to redirect that attention toward the web pages you want your email recipients to visit. All they have to do is click on the images.
Here’s how to do it:
When your recipients open the email, all they’ll have to do is click on the hyperlinked image to go to that link.
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If you have a link that you always want your email recipients to see (like a link to your company’s website, for instance), consider adding it to your Gmail signature. That way, the link will appear in all the emails you send alongside the rest of your email signature.
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Including hyperlinks will elevate your emails and make them more professional, but with Gmail alone, you won’t know if your recipients actually open those links. Streak changes that with link tracking in Gmail.
Streak makes it possible to track when and how often your email recipients open the links you include. Just add a hyperlink to your email using any of the methods above to use this feature. Then, click on your hyperlink to pull up the menu. If you have the Streak extension installed (with a Solo plan or higher), you’ll see the option to track clicks on that link. Toggle this feature on or off for individual links here.
With link tracking enabled, you can go back into any email thread and see if or when your recipient opened the included links.
Having this information is invaluable when you’re trying to determine how engaging and impactful your email messages are. Compare email views and link open rates to find winning messages.