Conversions in email marketing communication

Email marketing communication needs to be properly handled to be effective. Apart from technical matters, building positive subscriber engagement with email communication is very crucial. Nowadays, consumers feel overwhelmed by the volume of transactional and promotional messages they receive each day. It’s up to them whether they open an email and make a purchase, depending on how the offer is presented and tailored to their individual needs. When signing up for a newsletter, each subscriber gives the store owner credit of trust. In return, he expects to receive valuable messages that allow for a quick purchase of necessary items or services. If the email marketing communication meets this condition and presents the right content to the recipient, it can provide a stable basis for building customer satisfaction, as well as increasing the conversion rate of email performance.

What is a conversion in email marketing communication?

By far one of the most popular terms used in email communication is conversion. Quite often it’s mentioned in industry publications or at marketing conferences. But what exactly does it mean? The definition, which can be found in the Polish PWN dictionary, says that conversion is “a transformation of the form of something”. In email communication, on the other hand, -can be understood as the subscribers’ reaction to the received message, which is a result of previously planned actions.

Therefore, if email users respond to your messages as planned, you can assume your actions were designed well, resulting in a high conversion rate. But, what to do when subscribers show no interest in our mailings and stop responding to them?

How to regain lost conversions?

Lost conversions are usually caused by some irregularities in email design and traffic management. To find the cause of this, you should review each of its elements properly.

Clearly defined goal, target audience, and customer reaction path

At the very beginning, you should determine what goal you want to achieve from the planned actions. Conversion can be defined as opening a message, clicking on a link, making a purchase, registering an account, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, downloading an attachment, etc. It’s up to you what effect you want to obtain. However, most importantly, it has to be targeted to the audience you want to reach. For this purpose using declarative and behavioral data from your database might be a good idea. Only then you can determine the target group that may respond to the content of delivered messages.

To achieve a high conversion in marketing, there should also be a well-designed customer reaction path. It has to be arranged in such a way so the customer can easily and quickly reach the desired goal. What’s worth mentioning here is that users don’t like to think too long on received emails. Hence, you shouldn’t avoid using direct phrases which can encourage or point the recipient in which direction the action should be taken.

Contact list and its segmentation

The process of building high conversions starts with collecting leads. Remember to store them according to the rules and good practices. Carefully verify each email address registered in your contact base. Use well-known methods of validation such as double opt-in. Even though they may provide slower database growth, but ensure its high quality and data hygiene. Also, a large contact list doesn’t always mean a high conversion rate. The lack of control over the validity of stored addresses may lead to a situation in which some of them will be inactive or incorrect. Thus, from the very beginning, you are exposed to a low level of deliverability and conversion.

While building a customer base, you may want to consider what data you wish to collect from your potential subscribers. Keep in mind that the more declarative data you require while signing up, the less likely you are to gain a new customer. Mail users are still rather distrustful when it comes to providing data and dislike overly long and time-consuming forms.

The right opt-in form design also plays a huge role in increasing conversions later on. The more verified the contact list is, which contains relevant declarative and behavioral customers’ data, the easier it is to customize email communication to them. The idea here is to introduce contact list segmentation, in other words, to divide subscribers into smaller groups per mailing. Today we are moving away from sending campaigns to all subscribers at once. Instead, users prefer more personalized emails with an offer tailored to their needs. Thanks to customer base segmentation your mailings will have a better chance to improve conversion.

Email design, subject line, and relevant offer

Conversion rate is very much influenced by the email design as well as the offer itself. The way you prepare the email message has a significant and final impact on how customers will react. So if you care about high open, click and sales rates, make sure your message is carefully prepared.

When it comes to email design, you should try to make it as clear and simple as possible. The more complex the message content is, the less likely the subscriber is to take the desired action. That’s why it’s suggested to include direct words and phrases which instantly encourage recipients to behave in a certain way. So keep your message intuitive. Balance and arrange prepared content and graphics in the right way and emphasize all call-to-action buttons. Remember not to make your message too long. If you can’t avoid it, highlight the titles of particular sections, so your customers could find the most interesting part easily while scrolling through the entire message. Don’t exaggerate with the size of your messages either. Every provider has its mail size limit. If you exceed it, your emails won’t be accepted. At EmailLabs we recommend keeping your message to a maximum of 15MB including any attachments.

Another element worth paying attention to is the email subject line. Its short text should attract recipients to open the message. Instead of common clickbait phrases, replace them with more personalized text. The subject line should give the subscriber an impression that the email was prepared specifically for him. Moreover, it’s better to avoid too many email enhancements like special characters or emojis. Very often they are associated with unsolicited messages by clients and anti-spam systems, which may result in blocking or classifying emails to the spam folder. Remember that the subject line should communicate exactly what the email is about. Nobody likes to be deceived, hence the email title should relate to what the subscriber is likely to find once he opens it.

It’s quite difficult to define unique features that an offer should have to generate high conversions. Each industry is governed by its laws, which must be followed to achieve appropriate results in email marketing communication. In this case, the conversion rate may depend, for example, on the type of products offered, ongoing season, mailing frequency, planned promotions, etc. With so many variables it’s hard to establish general rules. However, the basis of a well-prepared offer is its full personalization and tailoring to the requirements and needs of a selected group of recipients. Regularly analyze subscribers’ reactions and behavior on performed campaigns and use A/B tests to examine the effectiveness of designed offers. Such practices may help in their optimization.

“Modern CDP platforms, gathering in-depth knowledge of each user’s interaction with a brand, offering products or its promotional message, gives a new look at personalization. By collecting various data and subjecting them to “processing” by AI, the marketer receives an advertising message that is truly personal from the customer’s point of view, ready for distribution. Keep in mind that personalization means not only choosing products that users tend to buy but also customizing sales (vouchers) to the actual “customer status” and prediction which allows for better understanding client’s needs in advance.”

Dominik Królikowski, Business Value Services, Synerise

Deliverability is the key to higher conversions

When talking about increased conversions in email communication, you also have to make sure it reaches subscribers. You may have a perfectly selected contact base, tailor-made and prepared offer, compliant with technical requirements email design or advanced mailing system, yet none of this will work if most of the sent messages land in the spam folder or get blocked by mailbox providers.

A properly selected and setup email infrastructure is the foundation of high email deliverability. According to general best practices, investing money in buying a dedicated server that will only handle your email marketing traffic is highly recommended. Choose a server that doesn’t have sending limits and owns a good reputation without being listed on any global blacklists. Also, remember to authenticate your From domain with your new IP address (by adding proper entries). The more a domain is associated with a server, the more trustworthy your mailings are for providers. However, If you send both transactional and marketing traffic, think about keeping them separate. These two types of email communication shouldn’t be handled by the same server and From address. If most of your emails are sent to Polish mailbox providers you should check if your infrastructure provider has authorized servers on their side. EmailLabs cooperates with WP, Onet, and Interia, which guarantees our clients premium traffic handling. This means emails are classified into appropriate tabs according to their nature and destination.

How to measure conversion in Email communication?

The way you measure conversion in email marketing communication depends on its purpose. One of such indicators may be an open rate. It’s a perfect example of how to easily evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Open rate is defined as the number of all registered unique opens compared to the number of successfully delivered messages. Based on it, you can verify how much interest in your message the recipients had, to make them read the whole email content. A high open rate may also indicate clients’ strong brand attachment as well as custom-made offers. A well-prepared marketing campaign can achieve from 20% to even 30% OR. For transactional emails, the engagement rate should be much higher and may oscillate between 70% and 90%. Given such results, we can talk about high open rate conversion. However, everything depends on the industry and the email content. In some cases, mailings achieve much higher results. Yet it is usually caused by additional external factors, which don’t always occur.

Open rate is one of many metrics to measure conversions. A click rate can also be used to track the performance of your mailings. Besides, depending on the defined goals, you can regularly monitor sales, subscriptions to webinars or conferences, downloaded documents, or even new registrations. Everything is up to your expectations and needs that email communication should bring.

Summary

Email conversion in marketing communication is a metric that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your mailings. At the same time, it provides information about consumers’ behavior and preferences. Properly analyzed may also affect campaign optimization. Today, we are moving away from mass email campaigns aimed to all subscribers included in the database – the conversion shows a new direction towards email communication based on segmentation and personalization of sent messages.