The conversion rate in email marketing… What does this term stand for? In a nutshell, the “conversion” word speaks for itself — this is the metric that shows a result of our efforts that turn into incomes. It’s quite easy to calculate it, the basic formula is “the number of those who completed the desired action divided by the number of delivered emails”.
In other words, the conversion rate is a percentage of consumers who completed action just that we wanted them to make. It can be a placed order, registration to your webinar, etc. Consequently, this rate is the key factor that determines the return of investment. And ROI is known as the strongest advantage of email marketing where one invested dollar may return $ 38.
Sounds simple and aspiring, right? But “may” is the core word in the previous sentence. No sweet without sweat — this saying is 100% about email conversion. What do we need for success? The keys are simple: efforts, well-planned marketing strategies, email template builder that allows implementing all the tricks mentioned below.
So let’s talk about the seven secrets of how to drive conversion.
1. Subject lines that hook people up
It will be right to start with this point. Why? The subject line is the very first email element recipients see in their inbox folders. It’s an essential factor that impacts their decision on whether to open a new message or not. So what the click-through rates or other results may we may talk about when emails are not even opened?
According to eSputnik statistics, the average open rate in e-commerce is about 25-35%. But it means that some businesses have only 10% while others generate 40%. How can we achieve success here?
The answer is simple — just make your subject lines catchy, creative and attractive. No matter would they be straightforward or sophisticated, they must be unique and noticeable. Avoid clichés — it’s better to craft something fresh! Just keep in mind that subject line should correlate with content.
Fortunately, we have a set of new options today like emojis or personalized subject lines. Feel free to use them all.
Emojis in subject lines increase OR by 3%.
This is how we pass to our second point…
2. Email personalization and hyper-personalization
Again, personalization is not a “breaking news” topic. This is an old good mandatory practice we all know about — and, I hope, apply. Really, open rate increases up to 40% when we mention subscribers’ names…
But this year it suddenly transformed into a new type — we call it hyper-personalization. And it became one of the 2019 hot trends. So, we need to revise our ideas about this – and learn some advanced practices.
In this post you can find detailed recommendations. Let’s just remind you that addressing by names is not enough — though required — as personalization is all about deeper segmentation of database by age, gender, occupation, location, preferences, marital status… Considering these parameters in emails will make your emails look like they were really crafted for a specific user. As for hyper-personalization, it requires constant tracking of clients’ behavior and activities.
You can either ask subscribers to set their preferences in the registration form, in a welcome email or by adding the “set/update preferences” option in all emails. The latter is also a good way to avoid numerous unsubscriptions when clients’ interests changed.
Personalization and hyper-personalization increase campaign CTOR by 29%.
3. Animated emails
This year, animation in emails is a hot trend in emails, as well. When speaking about animations, we mean two different types, old school GIFs and new CSS formats.
GIFs are meant to draw readers’ attention to elements we want to highlight. We also use them to demonstrate how to use our tools or services. In other words, GIF may serve as an alternative to video files when it’s appropriate.
Another mission of GIFs is to showcase a few product items in one scroll — it saves space in emails.
Important to note: be careful with these animations! Some people suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, so don’t add more than one GIF per scroll. The safe frequency is 3 or less flashes per second.
As for CSS-animations, they are used to animate clickable elements with a mouse pointer. Consequently, the best practice for using CSS in emails is to apply it to CTA buttons.
4. Videos in emails
First of all, information is percepted much better when visualized. It’s a proven fact. Secondly, even serious or boring messages become more interesting when arranged as videos. Moreover, videos are an indispensable solution to congratulate people or provide them with a detailed user guide. Companies that host conferences or webinars send videos of events to those who could not attend personally.
Important to note: videos could be personalized now.
Statistics: people are 65% more likely to buy something after watching a video. Of course, this video must be catchy and informative.
How can we send video via email?
Modern email editors offer two ways: you can insert a link to your video on Youtube or Vimeo or embed the video in emails.
Stripo.email combines both ways. This solution is optimal as you take care of all recipients — people with Apple devices will watch video right in email body while others will click the preview image which will direct them to a video hosting page.
5. Interactive elements
Interactivity was one of the top trends back in 2018, but email marketers forecasted that its popularity will decrease. However, it happened exactly the opposite. Why forecasts failed?
The matter is that Google AMP technology was released this March, and this event means the whole ecommerce reload. As for interactivity, the very concept has changed fundamentally. It was typically applied as entertainment components before — now it performs a new mission. It provides clients with real-time and dynamic content, saves space, allows interacting, buying, voting, commenting, booking, etc. — all that is done right in emails.
This technology implementation is still raw, and only some ESPs and email clients support it. But this is the hottest trend, so be sure — the situation will change very soon.
Currently, only email editor Stripo offers some AMP-powered templates. So you can craft these emails with no HTML skills at all.
6. Countdown timers and sense of urgency
These elements are technologically simple, but their use is a winning strategy as this is based on psychology. People tend to react to something urgent. They are afraid of missing some opportunities out.
This trick actually boosts your campaigns performance — it increases conversion rate by 9%.
7. Well-crafted CTA buttons
The last but not least point is your call to action and how you arranged it.
You can find tons of posts on how to make an amazing CTA button, but don’t waste your precious time — it’s enough to follow this basic rule: copy in call to action buttons must be simple, clear and straight-to-the-point. “Watch this video guide”, “Hurry to buy” or so — all this works perfectly when entire email content complements CTA.
Buttons may be of any size, shape, font, color, you can use GIF or CSS animations, aka hover effects… What matters is that CTA should be well-noticeable and built in accordance with your brand book style.
Final thoughts
I am convinced these tips will help you boost your the performance of campaigns — and, as a result, will drive higher conversion.
In addition to these seven best practices, there are some more tips to add:
- make sure that your emails design and layout are fully responsive. Today, over 50% of emails are opened on mobiles. That’s why you can lose clicks (and even clients) if your messages look crippled and mutilated on mobile screen;
- follow-up or resend emails. Track how many subscribers didn’t open email — and send them the same campaign again. Never give up after the first try, but don’t be annoying either, otherwise all you may boost spam rate;
- test the perfect send time. It requires many efforts, yeah, but brings profit! It depends on your audience and products, so send emails at different times and compare results;
- stick to email accessibility guidelines. First of all, there are people with visual and hearing impairments, dyslexia etc. — show your care about all your clients. And secondly, people are often quite busy to read messages, so they listen to them by using screen readers. Hence, it’s essential to send accessible emails if you want to improve conversion.
As we can see, everything is important here. Keep that in mind, use only the best templates — and be creative.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck!
