The Ins and Outs of Email Marketing Conversion Rate

With over 2 billion active email addresses worldwide*, there is no doubt that email marketing is a powerful tool for reaching and engaging your target audience. But just because your email list is large doesn't mean that it will automatically result in increased sales conversions! In fact, studies show that less than half of all emails sent are opened by recipients**, and of those emails that do get opened, less than 10% will result in an actual sale or lead***. So how can your email marketing strategy boost conversion rates? Read on to find out...

Major Factors that Affect Email Marketing Conversion Rates

Email List Quality - Is your list full of inactive addresses? Do you have a lot of duplicate or misspelled names? Having a good-quality email list is essential for ensuring high engagement rates and preventing unsubscribes. Because every email you send has a direct impact on your overall conversion rate, it’s important to invest time in maintaining and improving the quality of your list. Remove duplicates and scrub your list regularly to keep it clean. Be sure to gather up-to-date contact information as well so you can keep an up-to-date list of active and inactive contacts.

Subject Line - Are you writing effective subject lines? A clever and creative subject line can help attract the attention of your audience and encourage users to open your email. However, a poor subject line can just as easily deter readers from opening your message. An effective subject line should accurately describe the content of the email and provide a compelling incentive for users to continue reading.

Content - Is your content engaging and relevant? Does the subject matter interest your target audience? The content of your email messages impacts both engagement and conversions. It’s important that you take the time to create compelling content that will make your audience more likely to take the desired action. If you provide valuable information that will add value to your audience, they will be more likely to respond favorably to your emails and convert.

Timeline - Have you optimized your email scheduling? Are your messages being sent at the right time? Successful email marketing requires careful timing to ensure that your message is delivered at an optimal time for your subscribers. It’s important to send your message at a time when your users are most likely to open and read your message.

Calculating Your Email Conversion Rate

Understanding your email conversion rate (ECR) and the metrics supporting it is essential before benchmarking data and statistics. ECR is calculated by the number of total users who completed a desired action divided by the total number of unique recipients sent the email. For example, if you send a single email to a list of 1,000 recipients and 200 people make a purchase within 30 days, your ECR would be 20%. There are several steps you can take to improve email conversion—but first you need to know what’s working and what isn’t.

Why Conversion Rate Matters

The importance of the conversion rate is clear...it drives revenue, increases profits and improves business efficiency.

To put it in context, imagine a marketing campaign that generates 10,000 leads over a 90-day period but only converts 1% of those leads into paying customers. This is a poor conversion rate, which means that your campaign needs improvement to generate more sales. Now imagine the same campaign generates 10,000 leads but converts an impressive 5% of those leads into paying customers. This represents a much more effective conversion rate, meaning that your marketing tactics are more effective and are generating more revenue for your business.

Best Practices for a Higher Conversion Rate

1. Conduct A/B testing - The best way to improve your conversion rates is to test different variations to see which one performs best.

2. Make offers that are highly valuable to your customers - Your customers will be more likely to respond to your offer if it’s relevant and valuable to them.

3. Provide information that’s timely and useful to your customers - When you provide customers with information that is relevant to the products or services they’re interested in, they’ll be more likely to take action and purchase your products.

4. Test your CTAs - The only way to improve your conversion rates is to test your call-to-actions.

5. Maintain a clean contact list - A clean contact list ensures that only your best customers are receiving your emails, which reduces the chances that you’ll irritate or annoy them with your email messages

6. Build your email list over time - Building your list over time gives your brand credibility and helps build your relationship with your customers.

7. Segment your audience - Segmentation allows you to personalize your messages to individual members of your audience and target specific groups of customers with different messages.

8. Send targeted email to your subscribers - Sending a targeted emails to your subscribers will help you increase your engagement rate and boost conversions.

9. Create compelling subject lines - The subject line is one of the most crucial elements of your email and should be carefully crafted so it provides readers with a clear understanding of what’s in the email and persuades.

Conclusion

While finding success in business requires careful planning, strategizing and effective execution, there is no magic formula for success. The most effective businesses are the ones that actively and consistently improve their marketing techniques in order to generate more leads and sales. By following these best practices, you can improve the conversion rate of your campaign and get better results for your business.