5 Tips for Optimising Email Conversion Rates

The world of email marketing is just like any other marketing funnel, you get leads through the top of the funnel, and you then want to see as many of those leads convert to sales as possible. The key to optimising email conversion rates is to identify and fix ‘leaks’ in the funnel.

While there are many approaches to email marketing that can add to your success, these 5 tips for optimising email conversion rates outline the key approach that you need to take to be successful:

Know your metrics

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. How will you know if your email optimisation has been successful? You should at least be tracking the open rate, click-through rate (how often they land on your website from the email) and conversion rate (conversion of a click on the email to a sale) of your emails. Where possible, benchmark these against industry standards (like those here) to see what leaks in the funnel you need to address.

Know your customer

You’ve got a list of current or potential customers that you’re emailing, but what do you know about them? You should actively seek data on these customers to know not only if your product is appropriate, but also what messaging appeals to them.

To do this, you should research your email demographic (potentially even offering a paid survey) and ensure that you record the success of your campaigns at a customer level (such as through a CRM).

Test your approach

Testing your approach before sending out an email can be done through AB testing. AB testing involves comparing the success of approach ‘A’ vs approach ‘B’. You create two different email subjects and send these to two small samples of your mailing list, usually 5% each. You see which email yielded the best approach, and that’s what you send to the rest of the list.

There are many different approaches to what these two subjects can be, but to get the best results you should avoid these being too similar. You may focus on tone; with one creating a sense of urgency and the other more informative. You may focus on features; have each email focus on a different feature of the product.

Balance your content

Trust is a critical component in customers buying decisions. The way to build trust through emails is by balancing your sales messaging with interesting and informative content that shows that you know the subject matter. Offer free information that helps in the buying process or use of your product, without actively trying to sell.

Review and improve

The most important stage of email marketing is learning from your successes and failures. What did you change with this email? Which metrics saw a noticeable change? Keep track of the impact of your changes, and create and test your own hypotheses based on your learnings.

Email marketing is a learning process; these 5 tips for optimising email conversion rates will set you up for growing success in your campaigns.