6 Quick tips for boosting your email conversion rate

Are you interested in taking your email marketing strategy to the next level? If so, you need to think about how you'll encourage subscribers to open your emails and then follow your call-to-action (CTA).

It takes time to fine-tune your overall strategy, then eventually tweak individual campaigns. For first-time entrepreneurs and business owners, this task may seem daunting.

Across all industries, the average open rate is around 17.92%, and the average click-through rate is about 2.69%. If your numbers are far lower than the average, it feels like a constant uphill battle; I know that from experience. But with hard work and patience, I was able to boost conversion rates for multiple brands under our umbrella.

I believe you, too, can overcome the email marketing roadblocks in your path and improve your engagement rate.

Today, I'm going to go over six quick tips that I believe can have a significant impact on your open rate and conversions.

Choose Subject Lines Carefully

When you're scrolling through your inbox, what catches your attention? Most people are drawn to either the sender name or the subject line. In fact, around 47% of people say they open emails solely based on the subject line.

In light of this statistic, it makes sense that carefully choosing your subject lines can result in more conversions. There are two crucial things you should keep in mind when selecting headlines for your various emails.

First, your messaging should remain consistent. If you make a promise in your subject line, deliver on it in the body of your email. A consumer who feels let down by a clickbait subject line will likely avoid future emails from your business.

The second factor worth knowing is who is receiving each email. Personalization can dramatically impact your conversions, which I will cover a little later. For now, you should start segmenting your audience through onboarding emails or by including optional questions on your contact form.

The more you know about each subscriber, the better chance you'll have of choosing headlines that reflect their unique interests, objectives, and pain points,

Format Emails for Mobile Users

Mobile formatting plays a role in the success of your website, but it's equally important that your emails are formatted for smartphone users. Statistics show that about 61.9% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. This means if your emails perform poorly on the most popular phones and tablets, you will see a poor engagement rate.

There are a few ways you can quickly and easily improve your email format for mobile users. I suggest using a single-column layout. On mobile, emails with multiple columns are difficult to navigate, and often, links and must-see offers can get lost in all of the scrolling.

You should also use a responsive design that allows you to adjust button size and placement and format images for a range of devices. We've all tried to open an email that was simply not made with our device in mind. It is always a frustrating experience. As a business leader, you should avoid putting your subscribers in this position,

I found that taking these steps created a better experience for our subscribers, which led to them engaging with more of our content and offers.

Offer Personalized Experiences

Now, let's talk a little bit more about personalization. Believe it or not, over 80% of internet users say they expect brands to deliver personalized shopping experiences through email and social media.

If you're not doing everything you can to use your customer segments to create personalized marketing campaigns, you're missing out on a significant opportunity to improve your conversion rate.

The first thing you should do is get a firm understanding of your customers' struggles and goals. You'll want to spend some time on social media engaging with people who are interested in your industry. Pay close attention to your audiences' expectations and emerging patterns after gathering enough data.

Of course, it's also helpful to reach out to existing subscribers. When we need to gather additional information for our customer persona sheets, we send feedback forms to our customers based on their past purchases and customer service interactions.

For instance, if someone purchased the elite (enterprise) version of our software, I might ask how they feel our product scales with their business. From that point, I may decide to add a new feature that helps with scaling and send it to our enterprise customers -- including the person who offered the original feedback.

You can find plenty of helpful pieces of information intertwined in the responses to open-ended questions. I suggest staying in contact with subscribers, website visitors, and other industry experts. There's always something new that will help you further enhance your personalization strategy and boost email conversions.

Highlight Social Proof

Social proof is a marketing phenomenon where people are more likely to engage with a brand if they see that other people also think the company is trustworthy. Evidence shows that when social proof is used correctly, sales and consumer trust surge.

There are plenty of different ways to show social proof across multiple marketing platforms, but I will focus on email.

My favorite way to subtly add social proof to our emails is to use trust badges. Trust badges are seals of approval from well-known experts or businesses. The most common place to include trust badges is on contact forms, where they are known to boost conversions by 42%!

We use trust badges when one of our deals or brands is recommended by another high-profile business in our industry. Similarly, we include security-style trust seals on our email forms. When visitors see that McAfee protects their information, they are more likely to share their thoughts, which is often the first time we get to have one-on-one conversations with our subscribers.

Build Your Reputation as a Sender

As a sender, you have a reputation that you need to maintain if you want to consistently make it to your subscribers' inbox. If people mark your emails as spam or don't open multiple emails in a row, this sends a negative signal to the subscribers' email service provider (ESP).

Based on your previous reputation, ESPs may choose to mark all future emails as spam, which can seriously hurt your engagement rate. And if this is happening because you have a poor engagement rate, getting marked as spam will not make winning the favor of your audience any easier.

The good news is there are several actions you can take to improve your email deliverability;

Enable a double opt-in so only dedicated subscribers join your list.
Use personalization to build rapport
Ask subscribers to approve your email address
Make it easy for users to unsubscribe
Don't make questionable marketing choices, like buying an email list.

Experiment with New Funnels

Finally, you can improve your overall conversion rate by experimenting with new sales funnels. This last tip can vary greatly depending on your industry, size, and product availability.

Regardless of what type of product or service your company sells, there are several universal funnels that I think all business leaders should try.

For starters, I suggest investing in a cart abandonment email series. Almost 2/3rds of people who add items to their shopping cart will leave without placing their order. A well-timed cart abandonment campaign could be just the thing to recover lost sales and improve your conversion rate.

You'll also want to look for ways to convince subscribers to visit other marketing channels. When we have a giveaway or live event on our social media channels, we often email our subscribers and encourage them to participate. Not only does this help us get more people involved with our brand, but it also makes it easy for our customers to engage with us across multiple platforms.

I recommend sitting down and thinking about your marketing goals for the coming months. Once you have a list of priorities, think about how you can create new email funnels that will bring you one step closer to your goals.