How to up your email conversion rates

Email inboxes are competitive places. On any given day, the emails you send to your customers may have to compete with anything from a Hurry Sale Ends This Week mail drop to a What’s Perfect and Fits in a Sock? blast - that last one’s the doing of Firebox in case you were wondering.

So how do you make your own emails stand out from the rest? In this blog, we’ll look more closely at the concept of conversion rates and consider a few tweaks that you can make that should help you boost them.

What are email conversion rates?

Put simply, ‘conversion’ refers to a site visitor completing the desired goal, such as subscribing to a service or making a purchase. You can measure email-specific conversion rates by tracking the percentage of users that go on to complete the desired goal via the email you sent.

It’s important to measure conversion rates, as they are an indicator of the effectiveness of your email marketing. High conversion rates mean your marketing, and later your web design, are doing something right.

Consequently, low conversion rates can mean something is awry.

Of course, typical conversion rates vary depending on the industry you are in. Studies have shown that legal services have the highest average email conversion rates, while financial services attract the lowest.

If you’re interested in comparing your own email conversion rates to the standard rates within your industry GetResponse is a really useful tool, and can give you a better idea of what you should be aiming for.

The importance of high conversion rates

As previously mentioned, conversion is one of the biggest indicators of how well your marketing is doing. Monitoring your conversion rates is a really great way to check the effectiveness of your marketing strategy – as well as highlight any areas for concern.

In addition, high conversion rates generate greater income, which gives you freedom in other areas such as research and development. Increased conversions can also mean you become more ‘discoverable’ – if your offerings are used by a larger group of people, it’s likely they’ll pass the message onto others too.

As such, it’s important to maximise your use of email marketing. There are several ways you can do this, as well as a number of tools to help achieve your goals. We’ll look at those next.

Popular tools to help boost your email CR

Leveraging dedicated tools is a great way to give your email conversion rates a bit of a boost. Many more general marketing tools also offer email-specific features to help you better schedule your content and work on specific layouts.

Perhaps one of the best-known email marketing tools, MailChimp gives users the ability to design emails using a drag-and-drop system. MailChimp also provides detailed analysis of the content you produce.

By poring over the data available in MailChimp, you can easily identify the type of content that actually leads to conversion. With a better idea of what does and doesn’t work, future marketing emails are likely to be more successful.

AWeber, meanwhile, enables you to fully automate your email marketing through a number of different features. This includes detailed HTML templates, advanced tagging, and a drag-and-drop editor.

You can also ‘segment’ your mailing lists. This means, in theory, you can deliver highly-targeted content based on each individual customer. It goes without saying that showing a user content that relates to them is much more likely to lead to conversion than any other approach.

Although tools like the ones outlined above will have a positive impact on your email marketing strategy, the actual content of your emails remains as important as ever. So let’s take a look at this idea now.

How to increase your email conversion rates

There are several key features that every strong marketing email should contain. One of the most important is your Call To Action (CTA). In fact, effective CTAs included in Facebook advertisements have previously been proven to increase conversions by 285%.

Overall, it’s important to make your CTAs direct, uncomplicated, and actionable.

Design is another success factor when it comes to CTAs, particularly colour. For example, orange and red CTAs are more likely to be successful, and by using attention-grabbing design, you’re more likely to see a significant rise in interaction.

The broader design of your email can also impact conversion. Emails can often have ‘loose aesthetics’, due to the way brands pack in product information.

Emails should be designed with as much care as your website, and you need to provide a creative and eye-catching design. It’s also important to note how your email will look on mobile devices, as nearly 63% of email opens happen away from the desktop.

Also, a unique way of improving your email designs is by implementing User Interface (UI) patterns. People usually consume content in a particular order, meaning placing key information in optimal locations can have an impact on your CR. Linked to this, white space should also be a key consideration.

Finally, sending targeted communications that personally speak to a customer has an effect on your CR. Segmenting your email list based on specific factors such as geographic location and purchase history will let you achieve personal communication.

For example, MailChimp will let you segment your mailing list, using contact information to target and filter contacts. The segmentation options are usually extensive, meaning you can combine elements to help target the right audience.

Conclusion

Conversion is important, and in a saturated market, getting the attention of your users is proving more and more difficult. Marketing emails are a great way to get you, and the services you offer, noticed – but they need to be effective.

In this post, we discussed the key features that go into a strong marketing email, and how to implement them into your own. Through the clever use of design, segmented lists and eye-catching CTAs, you’ll be well on your way to crafting emails that get results.