12 Ways to Increase Your Email Marketing Conversion Rate

Your email marketing conversion rate is a surefire indication of how successful your email marketing funnel is.

When you send emails to your customers, you are not doing it just because. There are certain goals to pursue, parameters to evaluate, and KPIs to measure

After all, the ultimate purpose of an email campaign is to encourage conversions.

However, if this is not happening – i.e. people are not opening your emails, not clicking on your links, do not engage with CTA buttons, and, in the end, their actions do not align with your goals, you may have an issue.

So how to increase conversion rates in email marketing?

Simply put, you should use your campaigns and messages to further move your leads through the funnel and the pipeline.

In this article, we provide a guide with 12 ways to do this, and boost the performance of your emails.

Let’s get down to it!

1. Create a Customer Database Based on Your Target Market

An email marketing strategy should always start with identification of the proper target market.

If you’ve already conducted market research, you should have a clear idea of who your potential and existing customers are (demographics, geo-tag information, personal and business profiles, behavior, device preferences, etc.) and what buyer personas they fit.

Based on this information, you should create a client database where you have all the pertinent information you have on your leads and customers segmented and neatly organized.

This can help you plan and manage email campaigns, track your leads, send out the proper information, craft your messages, follow up transactions, generate income, and, ultimately, increase your email marketing conversion rate.

2. Build a High-Quality Email List

Building a high-quality email list can be a long and tedious process but, in the end, it’s all worth it.

However, it’s not uncommon for marketers to look for shortcuts and purchase ready email databases. And yet, buying leads can be tricky. You cannot be sure that all 10,000 contacts you obtain access to are real. Some of them may have been created for the purpose of filling up the list, while others (i.e. most of them) may be completely uninterested in your product and service.

This means that you risk wasting time, effort, and money on questionable value.

And even if some of the leads have the potential to convert, they are still rock-solid cold and will, most probably, require a lengthy process of nurturing with an uncertain outcome.

Simply put, buying an email list is highly unlikely to boost your email marketing conversion rate.

The best way to build an efficient email marketing list is to implement a variety of lead generation tactics, including, but not limited to:

• Business Networking
• Hosting and Participating in Webinars and Conferences
• Referrals and Affiliate Programs
• Social Media Marketing
• Creating Freebies and Lead Magnets
• Content Marketing
• Opt-In Forms
• Landing Pages

Furthermore, to increase the efficiency of your campaigns and boost conversions, make sure to implement lead scoring and qualify your leads.

3. Craft Clear Messages

Writing compelling marketing copy is an art form.

The saying more is less applies with full force here. You should strive to convey your message in a concise, clear, and informative way, and, at the same time, be witty and creative in order to attract the user’s attention.

Furthermore, you should be able to deliver value and answer the customer’s needs.

If the information and the way it is presented is not relevant to their requirements and preferences, people will just delete your emails without giving them a second thought

A clear message makes the process of understanding the content easy, and creates a better user experience.

SImply put, make sure your text is short and sweet, and fits your target market and to the goal of your message.

This way, you can boost email engagement and make it more likely that people continue on their customer journey and convert, rather than move your messages directly to the bin.

Related posts:

• Why Building Your Email List is So Important Nowadays?
• 12 Tips that Can Put Over 10,000 People on You Email Subscriber List

4. Use the Proper Language

There’s more to writing an email than just using Chinese, English, or French.

It includes age appropriateness, cultural sensitivity, and other specific circumstances pertaining to your target market.

By knowing who your audience are, who they think they are, where they are from, what moves them, what excites them, what values they support, and so on, you can use language to bond to them and strengthen your relationship.

This way, when you craft your emails, you can align your brand identity to their personality, and boost the chances of conversions.

For example, the language to be used for backpackers ranging from 18 to 25 years old is different from the language to be used when communicating with professionals in the banking industry.

Language appropriateness is very important in conveying a message to your target audience so as not to mislead your client with the wrong information, and/or not to drive them away by sounding inappropriate.

5. Choose Your Timing Well

Users nowadays receive an avalanche of emails every day. They are flooded and drowning in them.

To increase the chances of a client seeing and opening your messages, you should research when they are most active in their inbox and choose the exact timing.

This way, they are more likely to pay attention to the email, rather than discard it immediately.

For example, if you send emails in the wee hours of the day, more often than not, your recipients will not be able to see them right away.

By the time they check their inboxes, tens of other emails would have pushed your message down the line. The user may become frustrated and, before they reach your email, they may start deleting rather than paying attention.So it is highly recommended to send your email to your recipients at the time when they are in the right mindset and mood.

You can find this out by checking your email analytics, distributing surveys, and tracking behavior.

6. Resend Important Emails

Schedule your email automation system to send and resend the same emails accordingly.

Some of your recipients may not have read and engaged with your email the first time you sent it, but you should be able to set up your tool to exclude these users from the resending list. This way, you will avoid annoying these clients, and will reach out only to those who missed your message the first time.

For example, you should set up drip campaigns for messages such as abandoned shopping carts notifications, but it doesn’t make sense to resend a welcome email, does it?

However, you can resend an email to all recipients when there is urgency involved, such as, for example, when a special offer is about to run out. In this case, even if your customer has seen the first message, you should still send them a reminder, because it may convince them to convert.

Just consider altering the copy to indicate that the time is short.

Of course, this tactic shouldn’t be used for all types of emails – only for important ones. After all, there is no need to spam people with the same messages over and over again. In fact, you may even become blacklisted for this.

Sending the same email also saves your time in creating a new email – you can just adjust the old one, and still boost your chances of cutting your message across your target audience.

This way, you can increase your email marketing conversion rates with minimal effort.

7. Do Not Let Your Emails End up in the Spam Folder

Spam messages are unsolicited emails that end up in a person’s inbox. Normally, these messages go straight to the designated spam folder. They are highly commercial in nature and, potentially, may be fraudulent and include malware.

As a marketer or business owner, you should do your best to ensure your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Here are a few tips for keeping your emails from being flagged as spam:

1. Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
2. Avoid misleading header details.
3. Do not use false information.
4. Specify your location.
5. Do not use spam trigger words or phrases.
6. Avoid phishing. Do not even attempt to do so.
7. Free your emails from spam by using spam checkers.
8. Check if you are on a blacklist. If you are, do your best to free yourself from it.

You can find out whether you have been blacklisted as a spammer by using these tools:

• Email Blacklist Check
• Spam Database Lookup
• MX Toolbox
• DNS Checker

8. Create a Sense of Urgency in Your Emails

People love the sense of urgency. In fact, it’s one of the engines of impulse buying.

Use your emails to let your recipients know that resolving concerns must be done now, and you have the answers to their needs.

You can encourage your recipients to open and read your emails by using the following sample subject line formats:

• Invitation type (e.i. Invitation to FREE Wealth Building Seminar, Grand Launching Event)
• Controversial or shocking news (but real)
• Current events pertaining to recipients location
• Usage of the word “FREE”
• Objective based subject line (e.i Loss Weight in 7 Days, etc.)
• Limited offer

However, make sure that your subject lines and email content are compelling but not misleading. Otherwise, you risk driving your customers away, instead of encouraging them to convert.

9. Take Advantage of Workflows

An email workflow makes email management much easier and a lot better.

This refers to a series of automated messages that will be sent based on the recipient’s information (contact details, behavior, characteristics, etc).

A workflow will make your life easier when sending emails because it gives you the option to send the right personalized message to a particular group of individuals, at the right moment.

You may customize who you send your emails to. For example, you may send emails to:

• Your Twitter followers only
• Business contacts located at XYZ (location)
• Leads who clicked links or downloaded files from your website

By combining automation and personalization, you can significantly boost email marketing conversions at scale.

10. Coordinate With Your Sales Team

There is a reason why a company or any organization in particular works in teams. Working together as one and with a common end goal in mind makes success easier to reach and a lot sweeter when achieved.

As an unwritten rule in business, there must always be a synergy between the marketing and sales teams. The two departments should work together to better understand the customer and their needs.

There are marketing approaches such as account based marketing and pipeline marketing that unite the efforts of the two teams and see them work side by side. Taking a page out of their book can help you increase your email marketing conversions.

As sales reps, more often than not, are in direct contact with clients, they can provide marketers with unique insight into what drives the conversion, and what can fail it. This information can contribute to creating better and more efficient emails that deliver results.

Furthermore, marketing will be able to better nurture the leads and build a relationship with them before forwarding them to the sales team to seal the deal.

In fact, even potential clients who declined an offer by a salesperson should be taken care of to ensure the company’s good reputation, and to obtain their feedback. You can use it to improve interactions with other clients in the future.

11. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly

Nowadays, more than 81% of all emails are opened on mobile devices.

In fact, the open rate of emails on mobile is much higher as compared to desktop, and has incrementally grown over the years.

This means that making your emails mobile-friendly is a must. You should make your content easy to read and engage with on small-screen devices and ensure that the subject lines and CTAs are readable and render well despite the limited space.

Check your email analytics to see what types of devices your audience favors and monitor their behavior for relevant insights.

To avoid issues, implement A/B testing and see how different combinations perform on mobile and desktop and prioritize your prefered devices.

Nowadays, everyone is always on the go and if they can’t make the best of your emails immediately, this can definitely hurt conversion rate.

12. Add a Little Bit of Personal Touch

As mentioned, people are bombarded by hundreds of emails daily. To stand out, you need to go the extra mile and provide a truly unique personalized experience – even down to small details like using well-designed email signature templates.

Use all the information you have about your clients to craft a message that will resonate with them and will make a difference. Appeal to their emotions, special needs, lifestyle, milestones, celebrations, and other factors that you know about them. They will appreciate your email even more and this may build your brand’s image even further.

After all, there are tens of other businesses that offer them products and services similar to yours. If the customer is to choose you over them, you need to provide unique value, show that you care, and make an impression.

What Is Hyper Personalization? How to Use It for More Sales?

Conclusion

Always remember that the main objective of your email marketing is to increase conversions, improve user experience, and answer the needs of your customers.

To that end, make sure that you properly identify your audience first.

This will allow you to deliver a clear and high-value message, avoid sending spam, send email on the most appropriate schedule, and work together with the teams in your organization.

By combining all these tactics you can efficiently increase your email marketing conversion rates.