What Is CRO for Your Email Marketing Campaign?

CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimization, is a method of increasing the number of website visitors who take the desired action. In marketing terms, it’s increasing the number of website visitors who then convert.

Conversions are usually the end goal for any marketing campaign but “conversions” can mean different things to different industries and individuals and their goals. For example, conversions come in many forms such as: when people sign up to receive more of your content, register their information with your website, spend a certain amount of time browsing your site, or download content like your case studies.

Driving traffic towards your website is now only part of the equation, you have to get more out of your existing traffic and leads where it can propel long-term and sustainable growth. This is where your CRO comes into play.

With the power of CRO, it helps enhance your website to increase the number of leads you generate. And as we explained above, that is entirely dependent on you and your goals. The best conversion is those that come from qualified leads.

As mentioned earlier, a conversion rate can be seen as the percentage of visitors who are completing the desired action. When you have a high conversion rate that means that your website is well-designed, formatted effectively, and appealing to your target audience. You’ve hit the trifecta!

And on the flip side, a low conversion rate means there is something not quite right in terms of website performance or design. But no need to panic. Slow load times, broken forms, or copy that doesn’t make sense are common reasons for poor conversion rates.

So what is an industry-standard “good” conversion rate?

Well, it is not one size fits all. A good conversion rate really depends on your niche, goals, traffic channels, audience demographics, and other factors. But if you really want to put a numerical value on it, here are some conversion rates for various industries:

And as far as 2022 goes, the median conversion rate is 4.02% in comparison to 2020 where it was 2.17% globally. Typically a “good” conversion rate is between 2.6% and 6.1% and varies from industry to industry but also by niche. For example, the conversion rate for eCommerce sites in the food and beverage sector is 5.5% whereas the average eCommerce site in the hair care sector is 3.5%. Both are part of the eCommerce industry but within two different niches.

If your conversion rate is a bit lower than what you’re wanting, take a look at what the other conversion rates are within your industry, niche, and demographics. Then, put yourself as a customer.

What are they seeing when they enter your site? Does it have a slow load time? Does your copy convey a concise and easy-to-understand message? Make sure that you are increasing your potential for conversion by optimizing your website based on the different locations it’s accessed.

How to Calculate Conversion Rates

The conversion rate can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors, then multiplying that number by 100 to get a percentage.

A real-life example: You are wanting to calculate the conversion rate for email correspondence opt-ins. So you will have an opt-in form on every page of your website. You would then take the total number of opt-in subscribers and then divide it by the total number of website visitors, and then multiply that number by 1100 to get your conversion rate.

So if you have 100 form submissions and 30,000 website visitors you would then have a conversion rate of 3.6%.

Let’s Talk Strategy

By now, we hope that you understand that conversion rate optimization is very important when it comes to your marketing efforts. We can now dive into the best practices to help your implement a successful CRO strategy and help you benefit from conversion rate optimization.

Your Landing Page

Your landing page is premo spots for your conversion rate optimization. This also helps make a great first impression on new visitors and retain those who have been to your website before.

The best way to take advantage of your landing page is to put product information, offer an easy-to-use sign-up button, or incorporate a chatbot to see if they need any help with their browsing experience. You want to pull visitors further into your website and give them enough breadcrumbs to want more.

Pricing Page

A pricing page is one of the most popular pages on your website because people care about the money that they’re going to spend. They want to know how much and what kind of value they will get from giving you their money.

CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying your pricing intervals and describing the product features with each varying price point, or a place to request a quote or even a simple pop-up for to receive additional information.

Let’s do an experiment, if you have a pricing page and add a pop-up form to fill out check and see how many new form submissions you receive in 3 months.

Your Blog Page

Blogs are a great way to promote your services while providing free value to your customers and potential clients. Blogs help emphasize that you’re an expert in your industry field and you have the credentials to back up your claims.

So when you’re working on your blog page, think about using a call to action (CTA) to get your visitors to submit their email addresses in exchange for weekly blog posts or industry reports.

The Importance of CRO

With CRO on your side, you’re on a great path to having a successful online business. No matter how large or small your company is, you want to make sure that your website is converting visitors into clients. You want to do this in the most effective and impactful way - through CRO.

You will get more out of exciting website traffic and ensure you’re targeting qualified leads.

Although this all sounds straightforward, setting conversion goals aren’t as easy as it sounds. You will need to have a firm grasp and understanding of your website funnel. While your conversions continue to grow you want to think of your goals for them as for every 50 conversions you want X amount of visitors.

Your CRO Best Practices

Use CTAs in your blog posts and your email sequences. For email marketing and digital marketing, CTAs are essential to put at the end of your blog posts. This is a clear next step for your readers to take and it removes any guesswork from the equation.

Remember that as internet users continue to evolve and become wise to the advertising tricks, we are now seeing more and more of “banner blindness” where people are automatically ignoring the top banner information on websites.

Banner blindness plus the attention span of visitors, most people don’t even reach the bottom of the page, means a different approach is necessary.

Now, text CTAs are a great way to promote your conversions. Sometimes a basic anchor text CTA can give you the most leads rather than end-of-post banner CTAs.

Take advantage of lead flows. Lead flows are high-converting pop-ups that are designed to attract the attention of a visitor and offer value to them.

When was the last time you ran a test on your landing page? Landing pages are so important to your website but they are only as strong as you make them.

Landing pages are where website visitors become website leads or new customers. You can optimize your landing pages and conversions by using A/B testing to see which copy or new CTAs are attracting more conversions.

With A/B testing you can easily test different versions of copy, content offers, images, CTAs, and web pages to see what resonates with your target audience.

Your Tools

Your tools for CRO can be categorized into 3 different categories.

• Web analytics tools: these tools help you understand what’s going on on your website, they give you information about your visitors and a better understanding of how things are running
• User behavior tools: these types of tools allow you to see how users interact with your website
• A/B testing platforms: as we mentioned above about A/B testing, this category helps you measure the variations against a control to see what resonates more with your visitors

Your Overview

We’ve gone over what CRO is, the best practices, how to measure your CRO, and what tools you should have in your toolbox. Now if you follow the steps outlined above you will do great!

But before we conclude we will leave you with some helpful tips and tricks to ensure your CRO strategy is strong.

• Don’t make “random” or “willy-nilly” adjustments on your site. For every adjustment have it backed by data and make informed decisions
• Have a place where you can document everything and keep track of adjustments made and what has worked for you and what hasn’t
• Do not copy/paste from your competitors. You can borrow ideas and see if they work with your visitors but you will always have a unique niche
• Have a well-defined CRO roadmap. Define your processes and see what steps are necessary to get to your end goal

CRO marketing is a great way to increase your conversions and have new goals reached. The same visitors you are getting on your website are most likely the same visitors that are visiting your competitor's website too. So make sure you make it easy for them to make a decision and work with you.

Make your actions clear and give them clear instructions for the next steps. Make sure to show that your visitors are valued and that you will provide value to them every step of the way.