Email marketing is a time-tested tool in the armory of digital marketers. Leveraging the power of written communication, email marketing serves as a bridge between businesses and their audience, keeping them engaged, informed, and ready to take action.
Understanding the terms surrounding email marketing is critical for measuring the success of your marketing campaigns.
Among these metrics, conversion rate is perhaps one of the most important. It provides a measurable rate of success and can offer a wealth of insight into how your subscribers are interacting with your content.
What exactly is a “good” conversion rate? To answer this question, we need to first understand what a conversion in email marketing means.
What Is a Conversion in Email Marketing?
A conversion in email marketing is when a subscriber performs a desired action upon receiving and interacting with your email. This action could be clicking on a call-to-action (CTA) button, making a purchase, registering for a webinar, downloading a whitepaper, or any other action that aligns with your marketing goals.
The total number of conversions from your email marketing campaign is the sum of all these actions completed by your subscribers. It's important to note that the type of desired action may vary depending on your company's goals or the specific objective of a campaign.
For example, an online retailer may consider a completed purchase as a conversion, while a blogger might count a new blog subscription as a successful conversion.
Knowing how to measure conversions and understanding the factors influencing them are fundamental aspects of successful email marketing. Without this knowledge, you can't accurately determine the effectiveness of your campaigns or make data-driven decisions to improve future efforts.
Why Are Conversion Rates Important in Email Marketing?
Conversion rates serve as an insightful barometer of your email marketing campaign's effectiveness. By quantifying the percentage of your subscribers who take the desired action, conversion rates offer a direct measure of your campaign's success.
In simpler terms, a high conversion rate typically signifies that your email content is resonating with your audience and effectively encouraging them to engage with your calls to action.
Conversion rates have a direct correlation with your return on investment (ROI). The higher the conversion rate, the more successful your campaign is at turning email recipients into customers or achieving your desired end goal. This not only validates the resources you've invested in your email marketing campaign but also provides valuable data to guide your future marketing decisions.
If you notice that a certain style of subject line or a specific type of content results in higher conversion rates, you can leverage this insight to optimize your future campaigns.
Conversely, low conversion rates might signal the need for a strategic pivot, such as rethinking your email copy or segmenting your subscribers for more targeted messaging.
What Is Considered a “Good" Average Conversion Rate?
Unfortunately, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. Benchmarks for average conversion rates can vary significantly across industries, types of emails sent, and even among different demographics.
For instance, ecommerce businesses might observe higher conversion rates from transactional emails like order confirmations or abandoned cart reminders compared to a newsletter or promotional email. Similarly, a well-segmented and personalized email campaign might see higher conversion rates compared to a generic mass email.
According to a 2021 benchmark report by Mailchimp, the average email marketing conversion rate across all industries is about 2.5%.
It's important to consider these variables when setting your conversion rate goals. Understanding your industry norms, the specifics of your email campaign, and the behavior of your email recipients can help you set realistic conversion rate targets and devise a more effective email marketing strategy.
What Makes an Email Effective?
Crafting a good email that prompts users to take action is both an art and a science. While a robust marketing strategy is the bedrock of any successful email marketing campaign, the details, such as a compelling email subject line, engaging email content, and a persuasive call-to-action (CTA), play an equally crucial role.
Starting with the email subject line, it's your first chance to grab your subscriber's attention. An enticing subject line can significantly improve your open rates and, consequently, the potential for conversions. It should be concise and personalized where possible, and it should provide a clear indication of what the subscriber can expect in the email.
The email content should be designed to draw your reader in and guide them toward the desired action. A good balance of informative and persuasive language can help engage your reader and steer them toward the CTA. The use of visually appealing templates, readable fonts, and personalized email copy can significantly boost the effectiveness of your message.
The CTA (call to action) is the final push for your reader to take action. It should be clear and concise and tell the reader exactly what you want them to do. It should also be easy to find and click, particularly for those reading on mobile devices.
A well-optimized CTA can significantly improve your click-through rates (CTR), leading to higher conversion rates.
How Can You Optimize Your Email for Higher Conversion Rates?
Once you have crafted a compelling email, the next step is to optimize it for better performance.
With roughly 86.3% of the global population owning and using smartphones, it’s essential that you ensure that your email is mobile-friendly. With a growing number of subscribers accessing their emails on mobile devices, having an email that isn't optimized for mobile can be detrimental to your conversion rates.
Segmentation is another powerful tool for optimizing your emails. By grouping your subscribers based on various factors such as demographics, purchasing behavior, and engagement levels, you can send more targeted emails, which are likely to result in higher engagement and conversion rates.
Automation also plays a critical role in optimizing your emails for higher conversion rates. Automated emails, such as welcome emails or abandoned cart reminders, are triggered by specific actions or events and can lead to high conversion rates due to their timeliness and relevance.
A/B testing is a tried-and-true method for improving email performance. This is where you send different random groups slightly different emails to see which comes back with a better reaction. By testing different variations of your subject lines, email content, or CTAs, you can identify what resonates most with your subscribers and use those insights to optimize your future emails.
Optimizing your email also involves ensuring high deliverability. Factors like your email's bounce rate, the rate of unsubscribes, and whether your emails are landing in your subscribers' spam folders can all impact your conversion rates. Therefore, regularly monitoring and working to improve your email deliverability can lead to higher conversion rates.
What Role Does the Landing Page Play in Conversion?
The landing page plays a crucial role in the conversion process. It is often the next destination after your subscriber has clicked through from your email, making it the bridge between your email marketing efforts and your desired outcome.
An optimized landing page aligns closely with your email content, maintaining a consistent narrative and design to create a seamless journey for the user. If a subscriber clicks on your email because they're interested in a particular product, promotion, or piece of content, they should land on a page that directly relates to what was promised in the email.
Conversion rate optimization for landing pages may involve several elements. Firstly, the page should load quickly and look great on both desktop and mobile devices.
The copy should be persuasive and concise, the call-to-action (CTA) should be clear and compelling, and the navigation should be intuitive. If your page includes a form, it should be straightforward and ask for only the necessary information to minimize friction.
By optimizing your landing page, you can increase the likelihood that the subscriber's journey will continue beyond the click, leading to a conversion.
What Type of Email Has the Best Conversion Rates?
Email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and different types of emails tend to have varying conversion rates.
Here's a brief look at a few common types of emails and their respective conversion potential:
• Welcome Emails: These are the first emails a new subscriber receives upon joining your email list. They typically have high open and click-through rates, presenting an excellent opportunity for conversions.
• Transactional Emails: These include order confirmations, shipping notifications, and password resets. Despite their functional nature, transactional emails often have high open rates and can be optimized to drive additional conversions.
• Abandoned Cart Emails: These emails remind customers who have left items in their shopping cart without completing a purchase. As they're highly targeted, and timely, they tend to have high conversion rates.
• Opt-in Emails: These are consent-based emails where recipients have explicitly agreed to receive emails from your brand, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
• Coupon Emails: Everyone loves a good deal, and emails offering discounts or special promotions can drive significant conversions, especially if the offer is time-limited to create urgency.
Achieving the best conversion rates often involves a mix of different types of emails, each playing a unique role in your overall email marketing strategy. A well-rounded approach that considers the customer journey, lifecycle stages, and preferences will likely yield the best results.
Turn Emails into Sales
In the world of email marketing, understanding and optimizing your conversion rates is a key factor in the success of your campaigns. An effective email starts with a compelling subject line, contains engaging content, and concludes with a strong call to action, all combined to guide your subscribers toward the desired action.
“Good” conversion rates can vary widely depending on factors such as your industry, the specific goal of your campaign, and your target demographics. Therefore, it's essential to set realistic benchmarks and continuously strive to improve your performance by testing different tactics and strategies.
Optimization plays a pivotal role in improving conversion rates. From ensuring your emails are mobile-friendly and using segmentation for personalized messaging to automating timely emails and regularly testing your approaches, there are numerous ways to get more from your email marketing campaigns.
Email campaigns are complex, approaching different groups of your target consumers in different methods and styles. Each and every consumer is unique, and there will never be a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. When in doubt, a partnership with GR0 provides you with a team of experts across the marketing journey, allowing you to target more and sell more.
Sources:
How to write an email subject line | Business Insider
Email Marketing Statistics & Benchmarks | Mailchimp
Smartphone Usage Statistics [2023]: Facts, Data, and Trends On Mobile Use In The U.S. | Zippia.
