Is your email marketing campaign working exactly the way you planned it? Yes? Great! But if not, I’ve collated a few tips to help you consider what could be improved to increase that conversion rate.

Identify the customer pain point

It’s all about specificity. Refer to your buyer personas, and pick one. Identify the pain, problem, fear, want, need or desires and narrow it down to the one you feel is most valuable to this campaign.

Don’t be afraid to get really specific as trying to sell too many services or products in one email can leave the recipient confused as to what they should be reacting to.

Subject line

Is your subject line boring? It needs to be interesting, intriguing, clear and concise. When it comes to email marketing, the subject line can have a big influence on your open rate, so try not to make it too salesy or put too much pressure on your recipient. A subject that says, ‘you’ll regret it’ can be too confronting, but if it says ‘limited time offer’ that might be more tempting.

Think about the tone of the subject line as well as the content in the email so it all aligns with your brand, and remember to consider the recipient’s relationship with you – do they know and support your business already, or are they a new contact?

Send time

The latest research from Mailchimp suggests that 10am, midweek is the best time to send a marketing email. They say, ‘It’s somewhat established that the best days to send email blasts are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday across different industries and audiences. When we look at the typical distribution of optimal send times across Mailchimp’s whole system, the best time to send email newsletters is at 10am in the recipients’ own time zones. Note that no single day wins hands-down. This is what we should expect when studying the data of billions of humans’ inbox activity.’

Segmented audience

Segmenting your database into as many specific groups as possible is the best way to raise that open rate and increase conversions. For example, potential customers, bought once, returning customer, male, female, likes cats, likes dogs… Create whatever segments are relevant to your products or services to avoid blanket emailing people who will never buy from it. There’s no point in sending an email persuading a sole trader that your multi-station work desks are the best…

Personalisation

If you know the name, use it. It’s simple psychology that proves that you’re thinking of them, and only them, even if your segment includes 300 other people just like them. This makes it even more important that you segment carefully, so you don’t try and sell your new line of cat toys to Sharon, who only has dogs.

In fact, if you know that Sharon is a dog lover, she might like early access to a new product, or a special offer on her favourites. That’s next level personalisation!

Clear call to action

The whole point of email marketing is to get people to act. The call to action (CTA) should be clear and ideally contain a link sending them to a dedicated landing page for the campaign. Stick to only one CTA per email, button icons make it really strong, and place CTAs in relevant places throughout the email.

Dedicated landing page for your email marketing campaign

So, your customer has clicked the link from an email targeting one specific service of yours. That’s your conversion – it worked, but… Your website landing page won’t cut it for completing the sale since it wasn’t written for this campaign.

Your landing page should continue from the hook of the lead magnet or advert, so that the visitor feels it’s a natural continuation of their exploration.

Keywords should be integrated into every part of your email marketing campaign, including the email itself, the landing page and any paid advertising that accompanies it. The customer pain points should be aligned with the email and the solution to the pain made clear.

Calls to action should follow the customer journey so the customer never feels they’ve taken a sharp turn.

I have tips on writing compelling sales copy that will come in handy for the landing page in my articles.

Mobile optimisation

Most people check their email on their phones. In fact according to Uswitch just under three-quarters of surveyed UK residents (74%) use their phones to send and receive email.

Optimise your recipients experience by making sure buttons are big enough to click easily, the text is well spaced out, images aren’t too large and any phone numbers are clickable.

A/B testing

A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of an email marketing campaign to determine which one performs better. It’s done by sending the two emails to smaller groups of people. You can change subject lines, images or CTAs, but make sure you only choose one element to test, or you won’t know which one was more popular.

The three line email

Members of Entrepreneurs Circle, and many of my own clients love the three line email theory…

Not all emails need to be all signing, all dancing, so this is how it works:

Line one: A pleasant opener, such as ‘Happy Almost Valentine’s Day, Mike. Are you prepared?’ It may also be a reminder that they downloaded a help document and haven’t called you back, or that they abandoned items in their shopping basket without checking out.

Line two: The real point of the email. Say what you need to say as concisely as you can.

Line three: A graceful exit, with a CTA or notification of the next email to expect, should they be part of your regular email marketing campaigns.

I hope these tips have been valuable for you, and I’m sure there’s more we could talk about when it comes to email marketing! If there is something specific on your mind, whether it’s conversion rates, compelling sales copy or strong CTAs, I’m here to help. In the meantime, happy emailing.