Substance and Style

    Emails Not Converting? Try These Tips!

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    With as fast as technology is changing and how many new marketing channels are emerging all the time, it might surprise you to learn that email is still one of the most effective ways to get customers and make sales. According to Tidio’s 2023 email marketing statistics, the Return on Investment (ROI) for emails in 2023 is between $32 and $45 for every $1 spent, depending on industry. Additionally, email is responsible for 27% of all traffic to websites, so most people would benefit from effective email marketing. If your emails aren’t performing as well as you would like, try these tips:

    1. Don’t sell in the subject. If people aren’t even opening your emails, your subject line may be to blame. If your subject line sounds spammy, spam filters and people alike will perceive you that way. Craft a subject line that piques your audience’s curiosity or hints at a time-sensitive offer inside without being pushy, aggressive, or click-baity. Perform A/B tests with your subject lines and learn from the results. If you truly know your audience and keep their needs in mind, you’ll get there.
    2. Revamp your contact list. Are these qualified leads and engaged subscribers or are they people who downloaded a lead magnet and have never opened a single email from you? Do these three things: 1) Pare down your list by deleting people who never open. The more emails you send that never get opened, the more unopened emails you will have as the algorithms start to see you as spam, 2) Build up a better, more personalized list by asking existing customers and real world contacts to subscribe, and 3) take a good look at your lead magnets to figure out why they attract people who don’t convert. Make sure there’s a meaningful connection between what is offered and what you can do for them as customers.
    3. Segment your audience better. Make thoughtful choices about which people are receiving which emails. You should know where people are in their journey with you and send content that moves them along that journey. Don’t send the same email to everyone on your entire contact list (unless it’s something they are all subscribed to, like a newsletter). It’s annoying to someone who is already a loyal customer to get emails introducing them to products or services they’ve been using for years, and it’s confusing to people who know nothing about your business to get insider emails with tips for pros. Make sure your audience is segmented in a way that makes sense for the kinds of emails you send.
    4. Send fewer emails altogether. If you’re flooding the inbox, you’re annoying your customers and increasing your unopened rate. Think about your own inbox. Who among us does’t have a separate email address at this point for all the companies that send hundreds of emails a year? The worst thing you can do in marketing is fail to consider what it’s like to be on the receiving end of your own campaign. Strike a reasonable balance where you are on your audience’s minds when they need a product or service, but where they don’t groan every time they see an email come in from you.
    5. Send more thoughtful emails. Create a personal relationship with your audience by using a consistent voice and tone that reflects your brand. Provide high quality content. Create a value proposition that actually matters to them. Ask yourself if what you’re offering is something they truly want and need at this time. Give them a discount, a giveaway, educational content, or an introduction to a product or service, but also give them a warm message or a laugh from time to time. You know your customers, so give them what they actually want rather than what email marketing is supposed to be.
    6. Improve your design and copywriting. Don’t send emails that make people work too hard to get the gist. Even your most loyal customer is unlikely to spend half an hour trudging through 7,000 words of copy to finally get to the point. Keep the length reasonable, use line breaks, and leave plenty of white space. Stick to an uncluttered design with a limited number of visually pleasing graphics that actually support the words. Check how your email displays on multiple devices. Use language that emphasize the urgency or timeliness of the offer, is is specific and concrete, and is in keeping with your brand. Make sure every line of copy supports the purpose of the email and is appealing to the target audience.
    7. Ask for what you want. Sometimes when emails aren’t converting, it’s because the Call To Action (CTA) isn’t clear and no expectation is set. Whatever the CTA is should be the goal of your entire email, so people should not have to guess what you want them to do. Don’t make them work to get to this point and then have multiple steps they must click through. Everything in the email should have led to this. Don’t have them primed to buy a product and then have to click to learn more and then click again to get to the product page. If it’s a sales email, let them click once to go directly there. If you’re afraid of asking for what you want, you will put up barriers to conversion that waste your audience’s time and lose them along the way. Directly ask for the sale, follow, review, or whatever else it is you actually want them to do.

    There are a lot of variables in any marketing campaign. It’s important to analyze the data you have in order to see what’s preventing success. Make sure you’re A/B testing. Check your rates for open, click, and unsubscribe. Ask for feedback. Figure out where you’re losing people. The best thing you can do is get to know your customers and provide what they like and need. If something is going wrong, look to their behavior for insight into how you can improve your strategy.