How to Create Email Campaigns that Convert

An email campaign is an email sent to a group of people, whether prospects, leads, or customers, to motivate them to take action. With 347 billion emails sent per day, email campaigns are one of the most popular ways to get information about products and brand offers with a click.

FOR® have put together a list of ideas to help you create an email with a high click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. If you’re not sure where to start, this article will help you optimise your email content for more conversions.

Optimising Email to Increase Conversions

Your website alone can’t engage leads enough for them to become paying customers. You need another channel to re-engage your previous customers and convert new ones, and email is the channel for that.

You’ll learn the best ideas and tips you can apply to your campaign to increase conversions.

Use your CTA to Guide Subscribers

CTAs are very effective in increasing conversion rates. In fact, studies show that emails with one CTA can increase sales by 371% and sales by 1617%.

Placement of call-to-action (CTA) is key to increasing conversions. After all, if you don’t place a CTA your leads won’t know how to convert.

If you want your email subscribers to do something just ask them with a CTA. The golden rule is to keep your CTA simple and start with an action verb. Words like “Register”, “Buy”, “Order” and “Start” are standard as they tell your subscribers what to do. Or you can use a less generic phrase like “Give us a try” instead of “Sign up” and “Get me XYZ” instead of “Buy”.

Timing and Messaging

A conversion requires you to make subscribers read the email and click on the CTA. To do that you need to send your emails at the right time with the right messaging for the current stage of the customer journey.

The secret to finding the right messaging at the right time is to know what triggers are relevant and what information is relevant. After all 70% of millennials are frustrated with brands sending irrelevant information. So you need to share information relevant and interesting to your audience.

Personalise your Content

Customers want personalised experiences. In fact 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers personalized experiences. Another study shows 71% of consumers believe a personalized experience would influence their decision to open and read brand emails. 

The numbers prove personalization is very powerful in influencing buying decisions. So if you want your subscribers to buy from you you need to master personalization.

Use user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content (pictures, videos, posts, testimonials, reviews, etc.) created by UGC creators.

UGC is a powerful form of social proof. In fact, UGC increases email click-through rate by 73% and 82% of consumers say user-generated reviews are extremely valuable.

Sharing UGC via email is a great way to build social proof, and trust and get more prospects to buy from you. So, you can use other channels (like social media) to collect UGC and share it as part of your email sequence.

Tell your brand’s story

Storytelling has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. We love to hear and tell stories because it’s a fundamental human need to understand life patterns. Did you know people have a specific physiological response to hearing a good story?

Research shows when people hear an interesting story, their attention shifts, they retain more information and understand more. And the good news is telling your brand’s story can do the same to your email subscribers’ brains.

Use email to build a story around your brand and products. To create a authentic brand’s story search for inspiration in your company’s spirit, values and social mission. Choose a real person (like a company founder) to tell the story. Focus on creating an emotional and engaging story that will resonate with your target audience.

A/B test your emails

As a marketer, you want to know for sure which parts of your email are working and which are not. A/B testing is the way to find out which email elements convert more. So, what’s A/B testing? A/B testing or split testing is a way of testing user experiences by comparing two versions of content.

To A/B test you have to send different versions of your email to half of your email subscribers and compare the numbers to see which element resonates more with your audience.

You can A/B test different email elements, subject lines, body, visuals, personalization, wording, fonts, CTAs etc. Note that to get unbiased results you must A/B test one email element at a time.

Final Thoughts

Email is the best medium to engage with customers and convert at different stages of the funnel. So by optimising email content, you can increase conversions. Use CTAs to guide your subscribers to become paying customers. Consider timing and messaging when writing your email copy. To engage and convert subscribers send relevant and personal emails. Use persuasion techniques in your email to win your audience over and get them to convert to paying customers. Use user-generated content to build trust and increase conversions.

So now that you have high-converting ideas, stop sending emails and hoping for the best. Implement these, and you’ll have an email campaign that converts to your store.  If you want to Boost your online presence by creating email campaigns for your brand, you can contact Toni Hukkanen, the head of FOR®’s Digital Marketing Agency.