What’s the biggest challenge to increasing your email campaign profitability? Conversions, right?
Email marketing remains one of the most cost effective and profitable marketing channels, however, because that opportunity is widely known, the competition for subscribers’ inbox attention can be considerable.
The good news is that much of your competition does not know how to create high converting email campaigns. As with most things in life, the 80/20 Pareto Principle applies. That means that twenty percent of email marketers generate 80% of the profits. And by extension, 80% of email marketers probably do not have consistently profitable email campaigns.
Why is this? One of the reasons many email marketers are not profitable is because it is so low cost. In the world of direct mail and print advertising the costs are relatively high and therefore campaigns that do not produce profits get cut quickly to conserve costs. Whereas with email marketing, many companies are not as quick to cut off campaigns that don’t convert. Also, direct mail has been perfected over 100 years and email marketing is still less than 20 years old so there is an experience gap as well.
That means those few who know what they are doing can take advantage of that experience gap and reap disproportionate rewards.
The even better news is that what works to increase conversions in email marketing is relatively simple to apply. Here are 7 things you can test and apply to boost email campaign conversions:
1) Write to one person: Email is a personal communication medium. While people do use email for work, people receive email on their phones, on their tablet, and on their computers when they are home, at play, and traveling, in addition to at work. So it may make sense for you to write emails in a personal voice as if you were writing to only one subscriber, even if you have untold thousands reading the same message. Each subscriber who reads your promotions will feel more like they are receiving a personal communication. Don’t you feel more connected when someone writes to you personally? I’m asking to demonstrate the point because by addressing you in the second person as ‘you’, I’m demonstrating the very writing style I’m suggesting in this tip.
2) Write consistently: The phrase out of sight out of mind applies to email marketing. If you email less than once every week or two, you risk having some subscribers forget who you are. As long as you are sending emails that your subscribers find valuable and interesting, there is a benefit to more frequent emails. While it is important to match your subscribers’ expectations as to how often you will send emails, some of the most successful email marketers mail daily and some mail even more than once daily. That may not be appropriate for your situation, but if you have reason to mail more frequently it may increase your conversions. If you’ve only ever mailed infrequently, it may be a good idea to invite your subscribers to opt in for a higher frequency list and restrict your higher frequency email schedule to that new list.
3) Write stronger subject lines: One of the most effective ways to boost your email conversions is to get more emails opened. After all, an email that goes unopened can’t get any conversions. Self-interest is a powerful motivator and curiosity can be even more powerful than the promise of personal gain. Curiosity allegedly killed the cat, after all. That’s why using curiosity or a benefit in your subject lines, or even better, using both, can boost your open rate significantly. You may find that mailing the same email with a different subject line will get a different response from the same list. Try split testing the same email copy with different subject lines and see which ones convert best to your list.
4) Test the length of your email copy: Few debates have raged along within copywriting as to whether short or long copy outperform better. The best answer is: it depends on your situation. If you are currently writing short emails, test writing longer copy and vice versa. In today’s hectic lifestyle pace, you may find that readers will respond to shorter copy with a more direct approach. Or, you may find that subscribers will respond to longer, more in depth messages if they enjoy your messages and like to immerse themselves in the content. Similarly some offers are so obvious that a straight to the point pitch will convert better than a long wind up. However, more complex offers will suffer without a sufficient case being made. Either way, copy is never too long, it’s only too boring. As long as the copy is good, it should convert and hold the target audience’s attention and should be as long as necessary to do the job, and not longer.
5) Add stories to your email copy: Most emails are predictable and boring, especially after subscribers have received the same basic message format over and over again. If you tell engaging stories in your emails you could see a substantial increase in conversion, even when selling the same offer. For example, if you tell stories about your customer successes, or your own experiences, or even the story of the development of your product, the message can be more engaging and convert higher. We are conditioned across human history and across all cultures to find stories engaging and the best sales people use story to convey sales messages.
6) Focus on one response per email: A common mistake many email marketers make is to divide the focus on their emails by asking their subscribers to consider too many different things in a single message. For example, you could promote an upcoming event, a new product, and ask for a response to a survey all in one email. But the reality is that your subscriber is more likely to respond to a message that is focused on one thing. There are many reasons for this tendency so it’s worth testing to see if exclusively focusing on one topic per email boost conversions. After all, if you want to promote a product and the email contains multiple links to different calls to action, how can you know how effective the offer was? This advice may not apply to a newsletter with multiple topics, but it almost always does apply to a dedicated email promotion tasked with selling an offer.
7) Create sequences: People tend to like to finish what they start when it comes to installments. If you can create a series of several emails about a topic then make sure to mention that in the subject line. For example, “How to lose weight over the holidays (Part 1 of 5)”. When you mail this series to your list people will tend to try to read each one. This can boost your conversions because you have captured your subscribers’ interest. Also, if they tune in on Part 2 then they may well seek out the previous email and also pay extra attention so as to be sure to see the remaining parts. That’s why it is better to say ‘Part X of Y’ than just stating ‘Part X’. That way your subscriber can anticipate how many parts to watch out for.
Of course, you don’t have to apply all these 7 tips at once. However, doing just one can help you increase your profitability relatively easily and you can test more of these strategies in a step by step manner as time and resources allow.
The key is to understand that increasing conversions can be accomplished in many ways and to test different factors on a consistent basis to maximize profitability.
Author: Heather Seitz
Attention Readers, Publishers, Editors, Bloggers, and Marketers: You may republish or syndicate this article without any charge. The only thing I ask is that you keep the newsletter article or blog post exactly as it was written and formatted, with no changes. You must also include full publication attribution and back links as indicated. This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz.
For over a decade Heather Seitz used email marketing to build successful companies and had to solve the biggest barrier to consistent profitability: deliverability. Today she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Email Delivered.
For more information on how to get your emails opened and keep your subscribers engaged for maximum profitability, click here http://www.emaildelivered.com/blog. Remember to sign up for the FREE Email Delivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources for email marketers.
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