Let’s face it, if you’re building an email list, it is because you want to convert those subscribers into actual customers. And looking at your email conversion rate is probably one of the best metrics to understand the quality of your email marketing.
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However, it is very easy to misunderstand this and then turn your emails into an endless series of pushy sales tactics. Not only will that actually lower your conversion rates, it will also result in being perceived as being spammy. This will in turn destroy your reputation with both subscribers and email inbox providers.
The trick is to utilize some well established practices in just the right way, and boost your conversion rates with well proven tactics that actually work. So let us look at these today.
Look At Your Open Rates First
While it is easy to focus on what’s in the email, please remember that an email that never gets opened, cannot convert. It doesn’t matter if you do everything else right. You need to get those opens in the first place, and everything else comes second.
So how do you improve your open rates? Well, as it turns out there are several things that can improve your open rates. This includes utilizing merge tags, better segmentation, and good quality subject lines.
Now, since merge tags and segmentation also affect things other than just your open rate, we’ll discuss them separately. For now, I’d like to discuss subject lines with you, and give you some good news.
The misunderstanding that some people have about subject lines is that you need to be some super-witty genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it does help if your subject lines reach a level where other marketers go “Woah, that’s so clever”, it is not necessary.
To start with, it is enough that you just put a conscious effort in making your subject lines more intriguing. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring your subject lines until some time in the future when you can become the “de facto subject lines grandmaster”. Even a little bit of effort goes a long way.
With that said, if you want to learn more about subject lines, check out our super popular guide here: Subject Lines To Grow Your Business. It is a good head start if you want to start working on this skill.
Also remember that Emercury allows you to split test multiple subject lines. Simply click on the plus icon when creating a campaign. You can insert multiple subject lines, and then compare the results in the report center. This is one the fastest ways to get better at this skill.
Leverage simple personalization
Do you want to know the fastest and easiest way to boost both open and conversion rates from day one? Just utilize simple personalization.
Now there is a reason why I am telling you about the quick action step before I even talk about personalization and conversion rates. I personally find that too many people spend too much time overcomplicating things unnecessarily.
Personalization is one of these areas where we’ve invented some really advanced and complicated ways of doing things. Yet, those advanced methods only give a slight advantage over the really simple and easy things. And when I say easy personalization, I am talking about two things.
The first is simply utilizing merge tags. You know how you’ll get an email that says something like “{Your first name}, check out this cool new feature”. Well, even if you did nothing else and just inserted merge tags in your subject lines, you’d see an increase in open rates, and hence conversion rates.
But wait, it gets even better thanks to the developers at Emercury. What if you could get even more advanced with personalization, whilst keeping it simple and easy?
This is why we came up with Smart Personalization. It is this really cool feature where you can easily make sure that no two subscribers receive the same email. And it is as easy to leverage as basic merge tags.
Try to Use Quality Email Templates
This is another area where I see people going in one of two extremes. Some people decide that the design of the email doesn’t matter and it’s “all about the content”. Others go overboard and stuff each email with a bunch of images and colors that are just way too flashy.
You want to go for a clean design that is visually appealing, yet not overwhelming. And if you can make it fit with your specific niche and branding, even better. Fortunately, with Emercury this is relatively easy to do.
You can either pick one of the pre-made templates that we offer, or go for a custom template. And even when it comes to going for a custom design, you have several options at your disposal.
You can open up our brand new template designer, and easily create a template from scratch using a drag-and-drop experience. Or if you find a template you like elsewhere, you can simply import it and tweak it to your liking.
Alternatively, if you really want the best experience, you can even inquire about our email design services where our team of designers can hand-craft a custom high-converting template especially for your brand.
Work on your calls-to-action
You would be surprised how many marketers never “ask for the sale”. Whilst applying the other points in this article will boost your conversion rates, this is the one factor that multiplies everything.
Your job as a marketer is to produce conversions. And what is a conversion? Well it is influencing the lead to take an action of some kind. It doesn’t always have to mean a sale. The action might be checking out your new product feature, subscribing to your YouTube channel, or sharing your email with their friends.
Whatever the action in question, the one thing that matters is actually asking your subscribers to perform that action. In my estimation I find that most marketers fall in one of two extreme camps. They are either too pushy and turn email marketing into an endless sales-pitch, or they’re too wishy-washy and afraid to be direct when necessary.
The best thing about calls to action is that you can ask people to take an action, without being pushy. And the main trick is to just utilize action verbs. I’m talking about using words like “visit”, “click”, “check out”, “get your”, “buy”, “fill out” or “download”.
That right there is the 90-10 when it comes to calls-to-action. If you just make sure to always include action verbs related to the action goal of your email, you’re more than half-way there to substantial conversion rate increases.
Split Test Everything and Iterate
If you use a platform like Emercury you really have no reason to not utilize iteration and split-testing. This is the fastest way to both improve conversion rates and become better as an email marketer overall.
We really make it super-easy to utilize multiple versions of a campaign and even utilize multiple subject lines. And then, you can study the results for each version and find out what is and isn’t working for you.
The process of increasing your conversion rates through testing and iteration is actually simple. You try a couple of ideas, compare the results, and look at the metrics. With Emercury this is really easy as we make looking at your “success metrics” super convenient. In fact a lot of the people moving to Emercury tell us this is one of their favorite things and why they moved.
You really don’t have to complicate this beyond comparing open rates and click through rates. And then you can decide what you want to improve or try next. That’s the iterative process. Do this enough times and you’ll have conversion rates that can make any marketer jealous.
Understand Timing And Frequency
Timing is one of those factors that can make or break an email marketing campaign. In fact, you would be surprised by how different your conversion rates can be depending on when you sent the campaign.
And we are talking about two factors here: the time of the day that you send the email, and the day of the week. Fortunately, when it comes to the day, this is easy to get started with. Research and experience tells us that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send emails.
When it comes to the time of the day, this can depend on your industry and your target audience. If you’re selling to businesses and working professionals, you will do best sending somewhere between 9am and 12pm. The second best part of the day that can also work is between 2pm and 4pm, as this is when people are starting to wind down with their working day.
Remember, these are just some tips to get you started, but the best thing you can do is test and iterate. Having awareness is half the battle. The rest is about utilizing the iterative process to find what works best for you.
Frequency is even more important to get right
Whilst timing is important in the sense of “not missing out on high converting opportunities”, frequency can be a double-edged sword. You do want to increase your frequency up to the point where it produces more conversions and better results. However, if you go overboard and send too many emails, you end up going into danger territory and annoying your subscribers.
So how do you get this right? I think to start you want to set a simple easy frequency that you can keep up consistently. For example, decide you will send 2 emails a month. If producing content is exceptionally easy for you, perhaps go for 1 email a week.
Be warned though, it’s better to choose a lower frequency that you can be consistent with, than a higher frequency that leads to inconsistency.
After you’ve set up this schedule and stuck with it for a while, you can take the next step. You can, and should be segmenting your audience based on their engagement rates. Something which is exceptionally easy with our smart-segmenting features. And then, you can set up a more frequent emailing schedule for your higher-responder groups.
Then, as you get more productive, you can experiment with increasing the frequency for those higher-response segments.
Learn How to Provide True Value Upfront
Let me ask you a question. The answer to this question should be something that comes second nature to any email marketer. Can you tell me what is the number one secret behind the massive conversion rates seen in email marketing?
You have probably seen the stats and understand that email marketing beats everything else in terms of ROI and an ability to convert leads. But do you know why this is the case in particular? Can you explain it?
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about: email works because of its ability to build a relationship of trust over time. It allows you to keep up a communication line with a lead, whilst demonstrating authority and an ability to deliver value.
The part where you deliver value is a huge part, because without that part, it’s not really email marketing, but spam. In short, changing your focus to delivering as much value upfront, and only then asking for the sale is a huge secret to better conversion rates.
Get A Strategic Partner On Your Side
There’s no need to go at this alone. While we do put out a lot of free content to help you, nothing beats a one-on-one conversation. In these articles we try to help clarify things as best as possible. However, every business is different, so we have to generalize.
If you want to understand better how to implement email marketing in your specific business, let’s have a chat. At the moment I am still able to do some free demos, so be sure to book one while I can still do these.
I would love to hear about your specific needs, challenges and any confusion you might have about email marketing strategies. And then, help you see how you can use Emercury to improve your bottom-line.
Alternatively, or in addition to booking a free demo, you can also grab a username for our forever-free-plan while we still have it. It’s probably the most generous email marketing automation plan on the planet. We include almost every feature in this plan, with very few restrictions.
Remember, you get to keep this plan for life, for free… Provided that you grab a username while registrations are still open. Note that we might decide to pull this way-too-generous offering at any point. So click that link to check if we still allow registrations.
