Would you like to improve your email marketing conversion rate? If you’re like many other business leaders and marketers, the answer is a resounding “yes!”
A boost in email click-throughs means you’re connecting with people who’ve subscribed to your email list and actively engaged with your brand. These people are the most likely candidates to purchase your product or service.
It’s not hard to see why email marketing ties directly to the success of small businesses across all industries. If used correctly, you can build rapport with subscribers, learn about the needs of your target audience, skyrocket sales, and more, all with a few well-timed email campaigns.
Today, I will show you 5 clever ways you can start boosting your conversion rate. These tips address different parts of your email strategy, so you’re bound to find something new and exciting.
Let’s begin!
Use a Mobile-Responsive Design
Believe it or not, the average person spends nearly 4 hours on their smartphone every day. Couple this statistic with the fact that about 62% of all emails are opened on mobile devices, and it’s not hard to see why a mobile-responsive design is essential to your success.
Users will simply hit the back button without a second thought if your messages look sloppy or jumbled on their smartphone screens. To make matters worse, this situation can also result in your messages getting marked as spam. If enough people report your emails, you can expect to see a significant drop in email deliverability.
Here are a few ways to make your emails more accessible for smartphone users:
- Keep your subject line short and sweet.
- Strategically use pre-header text.
- Leave plenty of ‘breathing room’ (blank space) to improve readability.
- Check buttons and links with multiple devices. If you can’t accurately hit a button, it’s time to make changes.
- Use images sparingly. They should highlight your message, not define it.
- Find an email marketing tool that comes with responsive templates.
When emails are optimized for smartphone users, you can expect more click-throughs and conversions. If the numbers above tell us anything, it’s that small business owners may be missing out on over 50% of their email traffic by not using a mobile-responsive design.
Segment Your Subscribers
Segmenting your subscribers is an excellent way to boost your sales. In case you’re unfamiliar, segmenting is when you divide your audience based on their unique interests and demographics. For example, an online clothing store would have segments for people who prefer wearing suits and one for people who like casual clothes, like shorts and graphic tees.
For some perspective on how this strategy can impact sales, consider this; a whopping 77% of all email marketing profits come from segmented campaigns.
These campaigns have a higher open rate because the topics are relevant to each subscriber. Imagine if you were only interested in fun graphic tee shirts, but an online clothing store kept sending you promotions for cufflinks and ties. Would you get annoyed and unsubscribe from their list? Most people would say yes!
Research shows that personalizing through segmenting can do more than improve sales. It can also improve how many people decide to open your emails. We found that, on average, email personalization improved individual open rates by an impressive 26%!
One way to segment your audience is to send out surveys. We usually send out 2-3 surveys per year. This number includes the initial questionnaire new subscribers receive as soon as they join our list.
Choose targeted questions on your survey so you can learn more about the goals, pain points, interests, and needs of your email subscribers. If you can hone in on these factors, you can easily boost your conversion rate.
Timing is Key
Like most things in life, timing is key. If you don’t send your emails at the right time, they could get buried throughout the day, which means fewer opened messages and sales.
The good news is a lot of experts got together to figure out the best time to send emails. Here’s what they found:
In terms of days, the best days are Tuesday and Thursday. I believe this is because it’s an “off” period in the week. People are not scrambling to catch up after the weekend, nor are they working to quickly get things done so they can have a few days off.
According to research, the best times are 10 A.M. and 8 P.M, which also lends to the theory that people have a little more free time during the middle of the week.
It is worth mentioning that there are other time slots and days you can use. However, you have to make sure you’re thinking about the time zone of your local audience. If you’re in the United Kingdom and your audience is in the United States, you should schedule your emails at a time that makes sense for your U.S. subscribers.
Experiment with different times and days, and you’ll figure out the best time to reach your subscribers.
Use a Benefit-Focused Call-to-Action (CTA)
Your call-to-action (CTA) is what you want subscribers to do at the end of your email. If you don’t give them a clear direction, they will say, “okay.” after reading your message and move on with their day.
In most cases, a CTA is a clickable button that takes users to a product landing page, blog post, or sales page. But you can also use this strategy to grow your social media following, encourage event engagement, and more.
If you want people to follow through on your CTA, you should ask yourself one question, “why should the average person click through?” You may need to rework your email copy if you have trouble answering this question.
All calls-to-action should have a benefit at the other end for the customer. People expect to know “what’s in it for me?” at the end of your email. The benefit could be a product, exclusive price, lead magnet, or basically anything that would help your readers.
We improved our conversion rate by creating relevant CTAs for each audience segment and including the call-to-action in the email pre-header. This strategy allows us to tell subscribers exactly what they stand to gain by opening our message.
Your CTA will vary based on your industry, product, and audience size. Use your long-term marketing plan and goals to determine your CTAs and boost sales.
Keep an Eye on Your Analytics
Finally, if you want to see success with your email campaigns, you should keep an eye on your analytics. You can learn much about your emails and customers by checking key performance metrics.
Here are a few email analytics I suggest tracking and why you should start:
- Bounce Rate - Your bounce rate is the number of emails that were not delivered to their intended target. There are two types: a hard bounce and a soft bounce. Soft bounces signify that the email can’t be sent right away but will be at a later time. A hard bounce means the email address is no longer active or never existed. You will not see significant growth if most of your emails are hard bounces.
- Unsubscribe Rate - This number represents how many people opted out of your emails. Compare this number with your new subscribers and overall subscriber count for an accurate figure. Ideally, you should gain subscribers much faster than you lose them.
- Open Rate - As the name implies, your open rate is how many people click on your messages. A poor open rate could result from lackluster subject lines and minimal personalization, which you can fix with deeper segmenting. Across all industries, the average open rate is about 21%.
- Return on Investment (ROI) - determines how successful each email campaign is with your customers. I like to keep my eye on emails with extraordinarily high and low ROIs. Once I find a few, I look through the messages and try to find common patterns. The goal is to emulate what made our best emails successful while avoiding what hurt our poorest-performing messages.
Back to You
Email marketing is a time-consuming, in-depth strategy. However, I believe there’s no better way to have one-on-one conversations with dedicated customers who want to connect with your brand. The tips I discussed today have helped us grow email lists for multiple brands over the years. I’m confident you can see equally successful results if you put these strategies into practice.
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