This best practices to optimize emails for conversion is from Maria Fintanidou who works as a copywriter for email marketing automation software Moosend.
Email marketing is one of the most impactful methods to stay in touch with your audience. Far from sharing updates, email helps you move prospective and existing customers towards conversion—regardless of their stage in the buying journey.
Let’s say someone subscribes to your newsletter. One option is to send them a welcome email and thank them for joining your list. But you can take it one step further by including a discount coupon for a course that could interest them. That way, you increase the chances of turning them into paid customers.
An eCommerce business could leverage the occasion of a recipient’s birthday to send an email with a compelling discount as a special gift. You could also add some personalized product recommendations or have the offer expire in a few days to prompt immediate action.
These are some simple ways to use email to boost conversions. Now let’s go through five advanced practices to build connections with your subscribers and boost email conversion rates.
1. Segment your Audience for Personalized Emails
Have you ever received an email from a brand that felt like they knew exactly what you needed? That’s audience segmentation and email personalization in action. When you deliver personalized email content, you target subscribers with relevant messages that match their unique needs, interests, and behavior. This type of tailored content increases the likelihood that your readers will engage with your email and convert.
Here are some specific criteria to segment your audience:
Now that you know the different segmentation options, how can you use them to personalize your emails? That would be with the help of an email tool with segmentation capabilities.
Email marketing solutions offer segmentation options to group your audience and send relevant content to each segment. For instance, with Mailchimp you can do granular segmentation and apply if/then/else logic. But you can’t add more than five conditions for each segment or manage across lists since each list is siloed. Also, sometimes there are error codes when users export email lists from other tools.
Some of the most reputable Mailchimp competitors, on the other hand, allow you to use several segmentation criteria for each segment without limitation. Plus, they offer seamless integration with popular applications, facilitating data transfer and management while eliminating the risk of losing valuable data.
2. Create Memorable Email Content
Great literature hooks readers from the cover. The same goes for great emails.
Catchy subject lines lure readers into your email content. However, you should strike the right balance between hooking them and misleading them. Clear and simple subject lines communicate your objective, letting subscribers know what to expect in the email.
Moving to the email body, focus on creating content that’s concise. Recipients should understand what value they’ll get from reading your email. Conciseness isn’t enough, though—readability is essential, too. Break up blocks of texts into sections with headings, bulleted points, and visual components to create skimmable emails that subscribers will click through.
Using a natural and conversational tone makes readers relate to your brand. Here are some of the ways to catch—and retain— their attention while maintaining a casual tone:
- Humor
- Cultural references
- Emojis
- Memes
Be careful with their use, though, since some of these methods may not sit well with all audience groups. Or they might not fit your brand tone. And the most critical part of creating memorable emails is to represent your brand identity.
To create strong emotional connections, consider investing in the power of storytelling. Sharing stories that educate, entertain, or motivate is a great way to appeal to human emotions. But don’t limit yourself to brand stories. Leverage user-generated content to build social proof that affects your leads’ decisions. Customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies work great in convincing them that your brand is trustworthy.
Subject line: Don’t just take our word. Hear their stories with italki.
Italki is an online course platform that leverages social proof in their email content in a simple yet effective way. The content is centered around user reviews and success stories to inspire recipients and follow their students’ example.
3. Design to Perfection
Creating valuable email content matters. But not when it comes with a cluttered and confusing design. To optimize emails for conversion, think of the overall email experience. Well-designed emails capture attention and engage recipients long enough to take the desired action.
For flawless email designs, you should adopt the following tactics:
- Limit your subject lines to 40-50 characters so they don’t get cut off on mobile.
- Ensure your email marketing platform offers built-in templates that are responsive for small devices. Also, you must be able to test your email design to check that it’s visually appealing across different devices and email clients.
- Create clear CTAs with bold colors and action-oriented copy. It’s equally important to place them prominently to help subscribers spot them quickly.
- While eye-catching graphics are part of compelling layouts, avoid using them excessively. Also, remember that heavy files slow down your email load time.
- Invest in white space to keep your layout clean and create breathing room between elements.
- Opt for a font that’s easy to read and web-safe. Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Times New Roman are among the fonts that render properly with most recipients.
- Consider email accessibility. Use a high color contrast between the elements and their background and keep your text at an appropriate size, at least 12px. Add alt text to images, captions to videos, and descriptive texts to links.
4. Offer the Right Incentive
One of the most effective practices to optimize your emails for conversion is to personalize incentives for each reader. It works like this: You want them to follow your call to action and they want something in exchange.
Make sure that your incentive is something that matches your recipient’s interests, motivating them to click on your CTA. For instance, if a recipient has spent time reading blog posts on eCommerce trends or entrepreneurship, a guide on how to start their own store could address their challenges.
Here are some of the most effective incentives to prompt action:
- Time-sensitive offers like discounts or free shipping create urgency and motivate subscribers to act immediately on their fear of missing out (FOMO).
- Samples and free trials introduce your products and services to readers, giving them a taste of their benefits.
- Exclusive content provides readers with insightful tips, making them feel appreciated while positioning your brand as an industry authority.
- Loyalty programs and rewards encourage repeated purchases, helping you build lasting and mutually beneficial relationships.
Subject line: It’s Triple Star Thursday tomorrow
With this email campaign, Starbucks introduces Triple Star Thursday, a chance for members of their rewards program to triple the stars earned with every purchase. The email copy gets right to the point, highlighting that the benefits of purchasing aren’t limited to earning stars—they could win prizes in the brands Starland game, too.
5. Optimize Sending Times and Frequency
In email marketing, time is of the essence. Delivering your email content at the right time plays a significant role in its effectiveness. Simply put, send your emails at an hour when your readers are probably active to increase the chances for engagement and conversions.
But how can you determine the right time and frequency?
First, you should have a deep understanding of your target audience’s preferences and the industry’s benchmarks. Monitor your open and click-through rates, looking for patterns in user engagement. A/B testing is another strategic method to compare different sending times and determine which generates the best response.
But optimal times may depend on other factors like the type of email campaign. For instance, a welcome or abandoned cart email should be dispatched within the next hour after a user joins your list or leaves items in their cart, respectively.
When it comes to the right frequency, it’s important to keep your brand at the front of your subscribers’ minds. As a rule of thumb, sending newsletters on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis is a good option. Keep in mind that more than one email per week might overwhelm readers. Whereas, sending an email every two or three months doesn’t guarantee people will remember your brand.
When it comes to regular newsletters, it’s wise to stick to a schedule, e.g. every Tuesday. That way, subscribers will expect them at a specific day and time.
But if you need help figuring out the optimal frequency, don’t hesitate to ask your subscribers. Add an email preference option so they can choose how often they want to receive email content from your brand.
Capitalize on Your Emails to Boost Conversions
Email marketing remains a cornerstone of effective digital marketing, empowering brands to generate conversions and drive tangible results. From mastering content and design creation to personalizing your sending time and frequency, the practices outlined serve as the roadmap to email marketing success.
But to truly optimize emails for conversion, you need to keep experimenting and researching new ways to meet your customers’ changing needs. That way, you’ll be able to refine your approach and drive conversions with every email you send.
About Maria Fintanidou
Maria Fintanidou works as a copywriter for email marketing automation software Moosend, having created the Help Articles (FAQs) and overseen the platform’s translations in Greek and Spanish. She loves exploring new cultures and ways of thinking through traveling, reading, and language learning.