Tips for Increasing Email Marketing Conversions

A successful email marketing campaign is defined only by its conversion rates, and as marketers and business owners we know you should never be satisfied with the response you initially receive.

Below is a list of some key strategies that you can follow to maximize your email responses whilst also increasing your conversion rate and overall performance.

Get relevant or get deleted

Think about your own e-mail inbox. How many emails do you receive from advertisers that you actually open, let alone read? I suspect not that many! So what makes you think your customers are any different? The reality is that we all receive a high volume of emails every day and in order to manage our inboxes we move through our messages quickly, looking only for the information we need and delete or ignore everything else. So when it comes to increasing email conversions, relevancy of your message to the reader is the key. By setting up customer segments (as we discussed in our last post) you can ensure that the messages you send are tailored to the demographic and interests of your database. Doing this will make your messages more relevant to your readers and will increase the likelihood of them reading it rather than deleting it along with the rest.

Allow your email subscribers to update their subscriber profile

As consumers subscribe to your database you should be collecting some initial demographic and personal interest details from them. This additional information is what you would use to segment your customer database. Overtime however, these details will naturally become outdated (people change locations, get older and find new interests) so it’s necessary that you allow your subscribers update their profile information every year. By sending out an email asking your readers to update the information you have for them, you will demonstrate that you respect their time by only wanting to send them relevant information.

Include product recommendations and reviews

If you are properly maintaining your customer database then you will know what products and services they are interested in receiving information on or have purchased from you in the past. Use this information to include product /service recommendations that certain segments of customers may be interested in. This personalizes the experience for the reader and allows you to get other products (e.g. overstock items you may need to sell quickly) in front of the consumer that they may not have ever seen otherwise. Along with the product / service recommendations you will also want to include customer reviews for the products / services you are recommending. Often a third-party validation is what is needed to raise a subscriber’s curiosity and push them towards a purchase or activation of service. These reviews will work to validate your product, service, and company and coupled with the product recommendations will make a big impact on their decision to buy or not to buy.

Ease your sceptics with a guarantee policy

There are still a number of people out there who are very sceptical about products or services being sold via email marketing. For this reason, it is important to offer the customer the security that they have the ability to contact you if they aren’t completely satisfied with what they bought. A money back guarantee is always the optimal offering for potential customers. Simply knowing that they can have their money back if they experience any problems with their purchase, (for any reason) will help ease their sceptic minds and prompt them to purchase something they may have been too apprehensive to purchase previously.

Everyone loves free offers

Consider rewarding your subscribers from time to time with a free gift to show them you value them as a customer. It doesn’t have to be much. Gifts like an interesting eBook, a free software download, or a gift certificate for £10 off their next purchase will draw their attention and create the impression that you have their best interests in mind. Gifts can be rewards for previous purchases, tokens of appreciation on a subscriber’s birthday, or awarded for other reasons. Whatever the gift or the reason, everyone loves receiving something for free.

Use mobile to boost your email responses

Email helps to boost your response rates to offline campaigns, but did you know that mobile marketing via SMS messages can do the same for your email campaigns? Since SMS messages are more immediate and intimate than email, they are opened more quickly than an email is. If you know who on your list is also an avid mobile user and is willing to receive SMS messages from you, consider sending an SMS to alert recipients when an important email has been sent to prompt a higher open rate.

Uncover Business Opportunities by Nurturing Your Database

Email marketing at its core is all about relationship management. Your goal is not to just capture email addresses for the purpose of building a list. It is also to take that list, nurture it and turn your contacts into future and reoccurring customers for your business. Nurturing by definition means to encourage, support and develop a relationship over a period of time. In the case of email marketing you are looking to connect with the contacts in your database, regardless of their timing to buy and nurture them to a point of sale. Just think about how valuable your database could be to your company! For example let’s say your database consists of 20,000 contacts where each contact is worth £25 to your business. That would mean that your database represents a £0.5m asset to your company! So how do you take advantage of this additional revenue potential? Unfortunately most businesses don’t do anything significant with their consumer database. They simply let any potential for sales die as a result of not maintaining a meaningful relationship with their consumers.

Next month we will give you a number of tips on how to effectively nurture your e-mail list and builds a meaningful relationship with your consumers.

Are you thinking about running an email marketing campaign for your business? Why not give us a call for an informal chat on 0161 941 4615 or email us at info@theagencycreative.co.uk