The 10 Most Effective Ways to Increase Your Email Marketing Conversion Rate
Updated March 29, 2024
7 min read
Have you been working hard on your marketing campaign, sending numerous emails with little to no reaction from your audience? That means that your email marketing conversion rate is low. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” - Isaac NewtonYou must be asking what Newton’s Third Law of Motion has to do with email marketing? Well, when it comes to an email marketing campaign’s result, it’s all about action and reaction. Your action will determine your audience’s reaction, which in turn will determine the success of your marketing campaign.
What is Email Marketing Conversion Rate?
The success of an email marketing campaign can be determined by its conversion rate-the percentage of subscribers from your target list who complete an action after reading your email. The action will vary according to your type of business, or goals. Goals can be completing a purchase, subscribing for your newsletter, filling out a form, etc.
How do I Find my Conversion Rate?
You can find your conversion rate by dividing the number of recipients who completed an action, by the total number of emails delivered during your marketing campaign. Then multiply the result by 100, to determine the percentage. Generally, 2% to 5% is seen as a good email conversion rate, depending on the industry.
Is Email Still a Good Tool?
The answer is yes! Email is still one of the most used, reliable and powerful communications tools out there. Statistics show that 99% of email users check their inbox at least once a day. It’s the third-most “influential source” of information, only behind colleague and industry expert’s recommendations. In 2022 it was estimated that over 333 billion emails will be sent every day worldwide.
Wow! That is a lot of emails, right? But how do you know all those emails are being sent to actual deliverable addresses? Don’t panic, we put together the 10 most efficient ways to increase your email marketing conversion rate and improve your Return on Investment (ROI).
Ready? Let’s go!
#1 Know Your Audience
The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, “This was written specifically for me.” - Jamie Turner (International Marketing Expert)
The more you know your audience, you can create assertive and relevant content specifically for them. There are many ways to accomplish this goal- you can start by conducting surveys, monitoring audience feedback, and even learning about your competitors, and reading reviews from their customers. Once you gather as much data as possible, you can organize it through a concept called Segmentation.
Segmentation essentially separates the public into groups that share core similarities. It could be their demographics, their behaviors, their needs, their level of engagement, or their “stage in the funnel”. A more advanced way to segment your audience is through a concept called Personalization. While Segmentation is performed by the Marketer, Personalization, on the other hand, is controlled by rules and machine learning. This means that an Email Service Provider (ESP) will transform the data collected in specific content to a specific lead or customer.
#2 Quality Over Quantity
According to statistics, 18% of the nearly 122 billion spam-flagged emails sent every day actually have legitimate content. That’s why protecting the reputation of your brand and the right word choice in your email is very important. Also, make sure the content is relevant to the audience, you can add more value by putting some elements of Inbound Marketing to generate more interest and engagement. You can find some ideas on How to create a promotional email that converts. Keep in mind that your goal is to make the recipient feel like they just cannot miss the opportunity you are showing them. For instance, you can offer rewards for those who click on the CTA (Call-to-Action) right away. We will talk more about CTA in a moment.
Ortto has compiled a list of words that could cause a spam trigger and consequently prevent your email from arriving in your customer’s inbox. These phrases give off a manipulative, needy, and generally ‘spammy’ vibe. That means words like:
- Access now
- Take action
- Best price
- Free gift
- Very Cheap
- You are a winner
- 100% free
- Satisfaction guaranteed
- This isn’t spam
#3 Person-to-person vs. Enterprise-to-person
As we mentioned before, some spam filters can be set to avoid particular words, preventing your email from reaching the inbox. The same can happen if you’re sending from a general email. Your chances of reaching the inbox will be higher if you send your marketing email from a personal email at the company, not from a general email.
For example, a personal company email would be: john@company.com instead of noreply@company.com
#4 Be a Good Storyteller
“Great storytelling can make the difference between someone paying attention to you and someone just tuning you out.” — Christopher S. Penn (Marketing Specialist)Think outside of the box! It’s super important to communicate smoothly but assertively with your audience. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, would you pay more attention to a story that you can relate to, or envision your problem being solved? Delivering good and useful content will help you to build trust and develop relationships with your audience.
#5 Assertive Call-to-Action (CTA)
The Call-to-Action (CTA) is one of the most important factors that lead to a high conversion rate since it will be the tool the customer will directly use in your email to access your landing page. It determines if the recipient will take action after reading your email or not. In other words, this is the tipping point for a lead to become a customer. Avoid spam words and make your CTA clear and appealing!
#6 If it’s About Bananas, Talk About Bananas!
Speaking of the landing page, if you get an email about banana sales- when you open the link, you don’t expect to see about apple sales, right? It’s important that the landing page linked in the email aligns with the content sent in the email. Remember also to make the checkout process as easy as possible for your customer and your website intuitive, straightforward, and easy to navigate.
#7 Which Style Will Engage More?
Now you know the importance of CTA, do you know where to place it? In the beginning or at the end of the email? In green or in red? Write “Buy Now” or “Shop Now”?
These preferences can be determined by running an A/B Test. You’ll basically create two different email layout options and measure which one brought more engagement from the audience.
#8 Put On Your Best Smile
According to a report by Experian, 56% of brands using an emoji in their email subject lines had a higher “email open” rate. However, some images, GIFs, or emojis might not be visible to all recipients. Make sure to send your marketing emails to different domains as a test before sending them out. This way you can verify if your audience will be able to view the full content of the email.
#9 Make Sure They See It
Statistics show that nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns are not optimized for mobile devices. That’s shocking, considering that 59% of email users check personal emails on their mobile devices. So, your email should be formatted to be seen not only from a computer screen but also from mobile devices. Make sure to use a clear and precise layout for smaller screens.
#10 Send It to Who Matters!
The best practices listed above can help you to increase your email marketing conversion rate, but all this work will be in vain if you’re targeting the wrong emails. Did you know that only 10% of email addresses that are collected are accurate? It’s mostly because of human error when inputting email information. Having a target list with actual deliverable emails is vital for your marketing campaign. Wait, is your list dirty with bounced emails?
Don’t worry, you don’t have to deal with this all by yourself. You can sit back and relax while an email checker, like Emailable, does the hard work for you. They will verify your list and provide you with metrics such as “deliverable”, “undeliverable” or “risky”- with deliverability guarantees of up to 99%. They also have an Automated Verification Integrated with your CRM that can clean your list while you do other important things for your business. By cleaning your target list, you get rid of bad emails and increase your chance to get in your real customer’s Inbox, ensuring that your emails get delivered. To be even more assertive when collecting your emails, you can also add a Widget to your page and verify email in real-time while your customer is inputting his email there.“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.” – Ramsay Leimenstoll
Summing it Up
Understand your audience, so you can know what they want to see. Creating content that aligns with their preference will increase their interest in your brand and build credibility. Be up to date with targeted spam words and avoid them. Sending emails from a person-to-person perspective will improve your connection with the audience. Good stories will make your customer remember you. A clear and attractive CTA combined with a coherent Landing Page will boost your chances of closing the deal. Run A/B Tests to see which one will engage more. Make sure your recipients will be able to see all the elements in your email on their computer and mobile device. Clean up your target list! A clean list will protect your reputation and lead to more real recipients getting your emails. And validation tools like Emailable are an incredible asset to your email marketing campaigns by reducing or eliminating undeliverable emails.
Now roll up your sleeves and go boost that Conversion Rate!
