As of 2013, there are over 3.6 billion email accounts in existence, and most businesses spend at least some of their time and resources sending marketing messages to a group of subscribers within that pool. Since an overwhelming majority of consumers check their email daily and prefer to receive communications from businesses via email, this is an effective strategy to follow. But because nearly every company is performing email marketing these days, you need to make sure your messages stand out not only from your competition, but also from all of the other companies who are not in your field but are still filling up your audience's inboxes with their own communications. So how do you ensure that your emails are opened and that readers convert? Here are four email marketing tactics that will rapidly boost your email marketing conversion rates.
Make Each Email Only About One Offer
If you're sending an email to encourage your subscribers to sign up for an upcoming webinar, for example, then make sure the only content in the email is about the upcoming webinar. Don't offer your readers a chance to contact you with questions, or to check out your services page, or to view a previous webinar. The entire email should be focused on getting people to join the upcoming webinar, and the only action subscribers should be able to take is to click a link that brings them to the registration page. If you offer too many competing calls to action, then you'll only confuse readers about what you want them to do and they will either click on a link that doesn't lead them to sign up for the webinar or become overwhelmed by their options and choose not to do anything at all.
Include Multiple Links throughout the Email to the Offer
If you only put one link and call to action at the bottom of the email, then everyone in your audience will be forced to scroll through the entire message before they have a chance to convert. While this may sound reasonable, in reality it's sometimes a lot to ask, especially if your email is long given how busy most people are these days. You might assume that your followers would want to read your whole message before making a decision, however many of your subscribers are probably long-term followers of your company who trust your brand without needing to read an entire email to be convinced first. For these subscribers, all they need from you is a short description before they are ready to commit, so you want to have links at the beginning and middle of the message as well so that these individuals can take action immediately if they want to instead of having to scroll all the way to the end, which may cause you to lose them.
Another important thing to note when including multiple links is to avoid short and generic anchor text such as "click here" or "you can register for the webinar here". Short, generic anchor text can be confusing and hard to find in an email, and if you're subscribers are lost or confused then they probably aren't going to take action on your message. Instead, when including multiple links, you want your actions to stand out, such as:
Click Here to Register for Our Upcoming Webinar on Email Marketing Tactics
The anchor text and link example above is clear about the action a subscriber would be taking. Anyone who clicks it knows they are registering for the upcoming webinar on email marketing tactics, and will only click it if that's what they want to do.
Make Sure Your Emails are Mobile-Friendly
One quarter of all emails are opened on iPhone devices alone, so imagine how many emails are opened by users away from their computers when you factor in all of the other mobile devices out there. This means if your emails are not optimized for a positive mobile experience, many of your subscribers will not receive your message effectively if they try to read your email on a mobile device.
While designing emails for mobile phones may sound like it would require special skills or expensive software, all you really need to do is have a clean email with a one-column layout. This format easily adapts to multiple screen sizes, and won't distract the reader if the formatting is off slightly since they can just scroll left, right, up, or down to view the part of the single-column layout they need to see. Also, only 11% of emails are currently optimized for mobile, so prioritizing this tactic may be good way to boost conversions while getting ahead of the competition.
Segment Your Email List
Segmenting your email list means dividing it up into two or more sub-lists based on any number of characteristics. You can segment your list based on past purchases, industry, job function, buyer persona, geography, content topic and/or interest level. The ways you can segment your email are virtually endless based on your company's business objectives, but the work is usually well worth the effort because segmented emails get 50% more clicks than single-audience email blasts. Notice that's 50% more clicks, meaning 50% more people will be converting on the links within your email! Think about how much additional revenue you could generate if you boosted the click-through rate on your emails by half.
Segmentation works because email marketing is most successful when the topic or content being promoted aligns closely with a need or desire that the audience wants to fill. However, even within your company's own email database, your subscribers may have different needs and values depending on their current relationship with your brand as either a customer or a prospect, what industry they're in, what type of content they prefer to read, what gender they are, and more. If you can segment your list to better match the needs of your subscribers with the content you are publishing, it will only help boost your company's email marketing results.
What email marketing advice has been most helpful for your business to improve conversions? Share with us in the comments!
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