If Your Emails Repel People… See These 5 Steps to Better Conversions

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Think about it: What’s the point of sending emails if people don’t read them?

What if they read but fail to take action?

Let’s be frank, sending emails that convert no one is a waste of time. And money.

What if you can increase your email conversions?

In this guide, I’ll show you 5 strategies to improve your email conversions.

Email marketing is one of the best marketing channels for your business today.

The National Client email report shows that marketers get an average return on investment (ROI) of £38 on £1 spent. This was equivalent to $44 at the time of the report.

Furthermore, in a survey, B2B marketers reveal that email is their top source of leads and also produce leads with the highest ROI.

Why is email so effective? Because email has way better delivery than other marketing channels. A message delivered to your subscriber will be in their email inbox.

With channels like social media, the number of people you can reach is limited. Furthermore, you have little control over these platforms. Meanwhile, you own your email list.

Another reason email works as a marketing tool is that people check their emails. If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably checked your email in the last 24 hours. Maybe multiple times.

According to a chart by Statista, 98.4% of Americans check their emails at least once a day. And 33.8% check it throughout the day.

In the light of this, are you assured of success? No. Just setting up an email campaign doesn’t guarantee you’ll meet your targets.

Many marketers still fail to meet their targets through email. You can celebrate metrics like the number of people reading your emails.

But your email conversion rate is what determines the success or failure of your campaign.

In this post, I’ll show you 5 strategies you can use to improve your conversion rates and hit those lovely goals in 2019.

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of your email conversions compared to the number of emails delivered to your subscribers.

However, to understand conversion rate, you need to understand the concept of conversions. A conversion can be defined as completion of a desired action by your email recipient.

The concept of conversion can be interpreted in different ways which can get confusing. That will always continue so far your ‘desired action’ may differ from another person’s. Generally, conversions are grouped into 2 categories namely:

Micro-conversions: this measures metrics like open rate and the click-through rate of your messages.

Macro-Conversions: this measures metrics like sales and signups from the email marketing channel.

To calculate your conversion rate, it will depend on your definition of a conversion. If your conversion is a click-through, then your conversion rate is your click-through rate which is:

Click-through rate = number of clicks/number of emails delivered × 100%

However, if your conversion is a sale on your website, then your conversion rate will be:

Conversion rate = number of sales/number of emails delivered × 100%

Having said that, let’s go into the strategies.

1. Effective copywriting

For every stage of marketing, content is an integral part. If that wasn’t so, we can just send links in emails and get people to buy our product.

You can try it, but it will be a waste of energy and time.

Because even though people want to buy, they also want you to convince them. They want to be able to justify to themselves that they’ve spent their money well. Does your email serve as time well spent?

The words you use in your email will determine whether your recipient goes back to their email inbox to read another mail or click through to your website. This is where effective copywriting comes in.

Effective copywriting will show the benefits of your email to your recipient. Why should they click through to your website? What’s the benefit? Of course, you always have benefits for your customers.

But are you able to convince your email recipients of the same benefits? What are some features of effective copywriting?

It starts with the subject line

This is the first impression your subscriber will have of your email. If you fail here, you have zero chance of conversion as your email will not be opened in the first place.

According to legendary copywriter, David Ogilvy, on average, 2 out of 10 people who see your headline will click through to see the post. This is also applicable to email.

To perform above the average, you need to put a lot of thought into your subject lines.

Your headline needs to show benefits to your subscriber. Copywriting experts like Copyblogger’s Brian Clark advise that you should spend as much time on your headline as you spend on the main content.

Because a great headline is what will ensure your content is read.

This is an example of an attractive subject line by Jon Morrow.

It uses simple and clear language

Your email is not an avenue to use as many technical jargons as possible. Your email is not about you, it’s about your subscriber. Yes, you should display your expertise to your subscribers.

But not in a way to boast. It should be in a way to convince your email recipients you can solve their problems.

You should consider the fact that an average email user receives 97 emails daily in 2018, according to the Radicati Group.

Don’t waste your subscriber’s time. A simple and clear email should explain its benefits in a way readers can understand. Furthermore, your email should be as long as necessary, but not longer.

If you can say it in 50 words, don’t say it in 100 words to show your prowess as a writer and waste your subscriber’s time. Your email copy creates an impression.

If you build a good relationship with recipients through your words, there’s a better chance they’ll open your emails in the future.

If your email pisses your subscribers off today, your future emails will likely be ignored. Worse, they may click on the “Unsubscribe” link.

Below is an example of an email from Dropbox with a simple illustration and clear, straightforward copy. This email is to re-engage Dropbox users who have no files in their accounts.

This goes straight to the point by showing users the potential benefits of having files in their accounts and provides a necessary link.

It uses personalization

When sending emails to your subscribers, personalization helps you to connect with your recipient on a deeper level. This makes them more likely to carry out your expected action.

Experian found that emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Furthermore, marketers have gotten a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns.

Below is an example of a personalized copy by Birchbox about a discount offer to one of their subscribers. The email starts with the subscriber’s name and uses a conversational tone.

By personalizing emails and addressing customer pain points, ExtraSpace Storage increased its email conversion rates by 50%.

2. Optimize your emails for mobile

More people access the internet on their mobile devices. The same applies to email. According to a report by Movable Ink, 66% of emails are opened on mobile devices.

If more people will view your email on mobile, it’s only necessary that you optimize it for mobile. Emails with poor mobile views will usually lead to poor conversion rates as most viewers on mobile will bounce from your email.

While choosing a template for your email, you should choose a mobile-optimized template from your email service provider. Another way to test if your email is mobile responsive is to check your emails on your smartphone.

3. Use automation to segment your subscriber lists

In the past, you can just send blast emails to everyone on your email subscribers list. However, this is an ineffective way of doing email marketing. Because your subscribers want different things.

Even if they want the same things, they are at different stages. For instance, sending an offer to buy a product to someone who bought it last week is a waste of time.

Automation is one of the biggest innovations in email marketing in many years.

This is because automation helps you to segment your subscriber lists based on their behavior and past interactions with your content.

Do you have a subscriber who has read 3 blog posts on your website about Rolex wristwatches? Then automation will add them to a list where they can get more information about Rolex wristwatches or a promotional offer to buy one.

This is going to have a higher chance of conversion than sending an offer about an Omega wristwatch.

Apart from adding people to lists based on their behavior, automation can also remove them from lists based on their actions. For instance, a subscriber who buys a Rolex wristwatch will be removed from the Rolex marketing list.

They can be added to another list that shows them how to maintain their wristwatch to get the best out of it.

Automation makes your life easier as an email marketer. And more importantly, it improves your conversion rate as you’re sending messages that your subscribers are interested in.

Examples of workflows you can set for your email automation are:

Welcome workflow

This contains a few emails like thank-you email and blog posts to send to a new subscriber. Every new subscriber goes through the welcome flow.

How a subscriber engages with your content here will determine which workflow they’re transferred to next. Below is an example of a welcome email from Virgin America. It explains what a subscriber will get in their emails.

Engaged contact workflow

When a subscriber clicks through to your website to read your blog posts, they’re engaged with you and could be turned to a marketing qualified lead (MQL).

Of course, you have to specify what high engagement means in your automation software.

Whether it’s a subscriber who reads 5 of your posts or opens 10 of your emails, they’ll be added to this workflow when they meet your condition.

Lead nurturing workflow

To turn your leads to customers, you have to nurture them, usually with content. These are pieces of content that show the recipient what your product or service can do for them.

They prepare a lead to make that important purchase. Subscribers who are engaged with this workflow can be sent an offer at the end of the workflow.

Crowe Horwath, a public accounting and consulting firm, got a 75% to 80% open rate for its nurturing emails. This led to a 133% ROI after 7 months.

Checkout Abandonment workflow

If you run an e-commerce store, checkout (or cart) abandonment can be a headache.

In fact, Business Insider estimates that e-commerce companies lose a combined $4 trillion in annual revenues to abandoned carts. Furthermore, 71.2% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts.

However, an abandoned cart doesn’t always mean a lost sale. With the right cart abandonment workflow, you can get these people back to buy.

Business Insider reports that 63% of abandoned carts can be recovered by savvy retailers.

One common component of cart abandonment emails is discount offers. Statista reports that unexpected costs is the most common cause of cart abandonment with 56% naming it as a reason.

Smileycookie.com used a cart abandonment workflow containing 3 emails to recapture customers who abandoned their carts. With this, they were able to turn 29% of recipients of these emails into sales.

Product launch workflow

The time to find customers for your product is before you launch it. Generating buzz before your product launch helps to build awareness in potential customers.

Likewise, it’s an opportunity to tell potential customers what your product will do and its benefits for customers.

With this workflow, Samcart signed up over 3,000 new customers for its new checkout page software. This is from a list of 25,000 opt-ins and it led to a 7-figure product launch.

Onboarding workflow

Some products or services require tutorials for new customers to learn the basics. New customers are added to this workflow. They’ll receive tutorials on how to carry out the most important activities with your product.

This helps them to onboard and increase engagement with your product. This is the second email by Groove after a user signs up for its service:

The company continues to send these types of emails until it covers the basics of using the product.

To get robust automation tools, you need to use email service providers that possess these features. Some of them are ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Drip, Infusionsoft, etc.

4. Use a simple and irresistible call to action (CTA)

An important component of any email you send to your subscribers is the call to action. What do you want them to do after reading your email?

Without a CTA, your message looks meaningless. Your CTA could be to read a blog post on your website or claim a discount or recover their abandoned carts.

In most cases, your CTA will go a long way to determine whether a subscriber will click through to your website and perform the intended action. With your CTA, there’s no need to be subtle. Subscribers need to understand what you want them to do.

Your CTA should be in simple terms and pull your subscribers to click. It should be about the benefit a subscriber will gain when they click on the link or button. Of course, this benefit should have been explained in your email copy.

Furthermore, you should have a call to action with a single offer or benefit. It’s tempting to have many offers in a bid to attract every subscriber. But this will only dilute your message and attract nobody.

Below is an example of an email from Smartblogger’s Jon Morrow. You can see the CTA “Take Me to Freedom Machine!”

The CTA appears at the middle of the copy and the copy focuses on the benefits for the subscriber to click on the CTA. You can also see that the subject line shows urgency.

With emails like this, Jon Morrow has been able to sell programs that make more than $10k every month through automated drip campaigns.

5. Perform A/B tests

Do you have a perfect email campaign? If you don’t, then A/B tests should be a constant part of your activities.

The main aim of an A/B test is to change an element of your campaign and see its effects on conversions over time.

These tests help to eliminate guesswork from your decision making. You can decide to keep or remove or modify a part of your campaign based on hard numbers on how they affect conversions.

Many marketers are reluctant to carry out A/B tests because of the possibility of losing money. However, A/B tests also offer you an opportunity to make more if changes lead to an increase in conversions.

According to research by MailChimp, the average email CTR across all industries is 2.43%. One of the main ways to exceed the average is to test your email campaign elements.

Some parts of your email campaign to test are:

Subject line: this is the first part of your email that your subscribers will see. A subject line you love may prove to be unattractive to your email recipients.

Call to action: if recipients of your email fail to click through to your website, it could be because your call to action isn’t effective.

Design: the reality is that people may be influenced by what’s unrelated to your offer.

In some cases, especially if you run an e-commerce store, your email design could determine whether a recipient clicks through to buy a shoe or not. You should try different designs and see how they affect your conversions.

Copy: the aim of your email copy is to convince your recipient to take an action. Some words are more effective when you have to convince people to take action.

You can have 2 versions of your copy and send to different groups of subscribers to see the most effective copy.

Length of copy: for most emails, short copy works. Research by Boomerang shows that the ideal length for an email is between 50 and 125 words. These emails tend to have a response rate higher than 50%.

But you need to be sure that your subscribers actually prefer the short copy to its long version. You can test both versions and see the results.

Landing page: if you’re measuring conversions based on the actions email recipients take on your landing page, then you need to test the page.

Some elements of your landing page to test are landing page copy, design, background, words on the CTA button, the color of the CTA button, etc.

While testing, you should observe these 2 practices to get the most accurate results from your tests:

Test a single element at a time

To know what factor is making a difference, it’s important to test a single element of your campaign at a time. If you’re testing 3 parts of your email campaign at a time, how do you account for the change responsible for your results? It’s difficult to track your results and attribute it to the right change.

Let your test run

A result you get after running a test for a short period of time might just be a coincidence. You need a large data set to confirm that your change is really responsible for the difference in results you see.

To get a large data set, you need to leave your test to run for a long period of time. How long your test should run will depend on how many subscribers read your email.

For instance, if 1000 subscribers read your emails weekly, you can run your test for a few weeks. However, you’ll need more time if 150 subscribers read your email.

Conclusion

Boosting your email conversion rates is a goal you’ll always pursue in your email marketing campaigns.

It requires a deep understanding of your email subscribers and the benefits they want from your business.

This will help you to send the right messages to convert your subscribers.