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7 Little Tweaks That’ll Improve Your Email Marketing’s Conversion Rates
Email Best Practices
7 little tweaks that’ll improve your email marketing’s conversion rates
We all know email is the best performing marketing channel. Check out these seven tricks to boost your email strategy and increase conversion rates.
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So you write a fantastic email about a company sale you’re having and then send it out to your list. You’re certain this is the email that will rake in those sales this week and have all your customers love you.
But 24 hours after sending the email… nothing happens. Your conversions are at all-time low – almost no one took action – and you wonder where you could have gone wrong.
That’s what we’re here for. In this post, we’ll walk you through seven small tweaks you can do on your email campaigns to see big improvements in your conversions. But first, here are a couple reasons why your emails might not be getting you the results you want.
Table of contents
Use your name in the From Name field
Take advantage of the Preview text
Regularly clean your list
Segment your email list
Make A/B testing a habit
Include a clear and compelling CTA
Brush up on your copywriting skills
Value first, sales second
Why is your email marketing campaign not bringing results?
There could be a number of reasons your email marketing campaign isn’t bringing you the conversions you thought.
For one thing, you might not be giving your subscribers a compelling reason to open your emails.
Let’s face it, the average person probably gets about a hundred emails a day if not more – and if you’re not standing out from their crowded inboxes, you can bet they’ll be skimming over your name and email without question.
Secondly, it’s possible you're sending your emails to the wrong people.
One main reason people unsubscribe or don’t open emails isn’t just because they have so much already – other times, it’s because they don’t feel that your emails are relevant to them anymore.
And lastly, another reason your email marketing campaign is performing poorly: your email's copy is all about you.
Jason Chow, Head of Marketing and Outreach at HostScore, says that this is a common mistake that even seasoned marketers make.
One of the jobs of a marketer is to convince potential customers that their product or service is the best one available in the market, so the tendency is to put the spotlight on the product or service. But what many marketers don’t realize is that their customers don’t care about all of that. They want to know what’s in it for them and how will they benefit from your product. If you don’t address this in your emails, they won’t convert.
Jason Chow Head of Marketing and Outreach at HostScore
People open emails and click through to links and promotions from brands and businesses because they see some kind of value in doing so. So if you aren’t making your benefits for your customer clear, then you won’t be seeing any conversions.
How to improve your email marketing's conversion rates
Now that you’ve seen some ways you might be able to diagnose problems in your email marketing, let’s take a look at these seven quick tips that can help you remedy them and get you on the road to better-performing email.
Use your name in the From Name field
One easy thing you can implement right away is adding a human touch to those email campaigns. By just using your real name instead of business name in the From Name field, you can stand to increase email open rates by 35%.
Take advantage of the Preview text
The preview text are the handful of words that people see from their inboxes without having to open your email.
If supported by your email service provider, you can edit this preview text right as you build your campaign. If not, you can simply make the first line of your whole email more exciting and compelling.
Here are a few Preview text ideas you can use to entice readers to open your emails:
Ask a question
Hint at an exciting announcement
Use curiosity-inducing words
Include urgent callouts
Regularly clean your list
One key strategy for keeping a healthy email list is regularly pruning cold subscribers. These subscribers are people who haven’t engaged with your emails or brands for at least three3 months. These cold subscribers can seriously hurt your overall conversion rates in the long-run, and imagine all the money you’d save if you cleaned out cold subscribers who are only taking up space in your mailing list.
Segment your email list
When you further segment your email list according to different characteristics like goals, interests, or even gender, you ’re able to create more highly-personalized emails that can increase your chances of getting subscribers to convert.
You can segment subscribers based on which lead generation form they might have signed up for – say, a business might segment people who signed up for a free email marketing paper, they’d be added to a segment called Email Marketing, while those who opted in for a social media statistics report might be in a segment for Social Media.
This way, you can send more relevant emails to subscribers per segment and enjoy better open rates and click-throughs.
Make A/B testing a habit
If you’re not already A/B testing consistently for your email marketing, now is a good time to start.
Subject lines are the thing you’ll most often be testing, but you can also experiment with these things:
Campaign send times. You can experiment with different days and times for your emails to see which ones get the highest opens and click-throughs.
In-email links. Seeing which links your audience is clicking on in your emails, such as social media links or different CTAs, can give you a lot of insight for future campaigns.
Images. Sometimes one kind of design will encourage better conversions. Experiment with different images and video stills on your campaigns to start getting insights about what people are clicking on.
Include a clear and compelling CTA
One thing that will always be email marketing best practice is to include clear and persuasive CTAs. To optimize conversions and click-throughs, use action words such as “Buy now,” “Click to read,” or “Watch now.”
Opt to sprinkle in your CTA in different parts of your email and not just once, and make sure there’s contrast – such as a bright button or bold link – that signals some kind of action your audience can take.
Brush up on your copywriting skills
Copywriting is a huge contributor to your conversion rates. If you’ve already got your audience opening your emails, you should be able to persuade them by the end.
Whether you want to persuade them into changing their mind about a topic or into taking action, practice better copywriting in each campaign to consistently get better results.
Value first, sales second
Last but not least, you will always need to provide value before you can ever make the sale.
Convince your audience that you’re the expert in a given topic, give them helpful free resources or tips, and always think about how your email – even if sales-related in nature – can provide value in their lives.
To do this, think of your product’s benefits instead of features. Tell audiences transformations they can expect when they buy from you or click this link or work with you.
Always put the focus on helping your audience, and the sales and conversions will come.
Key Takeaways
If you aren’t seeing the results you want from your email marketing campaigns, be sure to take a good look at your current strategy and see where to make improvements. Review the tips listed in this article as a start. Then over time, as you implement better strategies and techniques, you’ll being seeing those conversion rates skyrocketing in no time.
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This post was written by Kevin Payne, a content marketing consultant helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.
