Email marketing can be great when it works – you create an auto responder series, get a bunch of leads and watch the sales roll in. But what about in instances where the open rates or conversions leave you scratching your head because they are so poor? In most cases there is a solution to such problems, and to find out what some of these are read on.
When Open Rates Are Too Low
Having low open rates is one of the biggest indicators that your email campaign isn’t going very well. Luckily, you can improve the situation by carrying out A/B split testing. This involves creating two versions of something and then using both versions simultaneously in order to see which one performs better. Anum Hussain from Hubspot explains the importance of A/B testing:
A/B testing can benefit the overall growth of your email marketing channel by providing you with bits of insight every day. Every email you send without an A/B test is a lost opportunity for growth. It’s also a lost opportunity to remedy future email campaigns.
In the case of low open rates, the subject line is one of the key reasons. Therefore, you need to use a few different subject lines to see which one performs better. Furthermore, at the end of you email messages you need to leave cliffhangers so that the subscribers will become curious to see what the next email will contain and consequently open rates will go up.
When Emails Aren’t Loading Properly On Mobiles
With so many people reading their emails on smartphones nowadays you need to make sure that they can be read without any problems. One way of ensuring this is to make your emails in a one column format, because otherwise the width of the email can become an issue for smartphones. Also the use of pictures should be kept to a minimum, and when they are used the size needs to be small. Smartphones have a problem loading very large images and even when they do the results can be awkward. An expert from Constant Contact reports the importance of optimizing emails for smartphones:
Smartphone usage is sky-rocketing, and with it, so is the number of people that are reading email on a mobile device. According to Litmus, 43% of email is now opened on a mobile device. That number is up 138% from 2010, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s going to continue to grow.
Furthermore, the call to action needs to be clear so that users can see it and click on the link to the product. Smartphone users have even shorter attention spans than internet users do and as a result you need to create the shortest possible call to action that you can without sacrificing on the quality.
When Your Emails Look Visually Bland
Emails are simple for the most part in terms of design, nowhere near the complexity of designing a website, yet you must give the matter some thought if you are to increase conversions. For those of you that have no design experience can use templates in order to have professional designs that you can rely on.
Also, marketing emails need to be broken up into short paragraphs that can be easily skimmed over. This is because a lot of email readers will simply skim through the email first in order to make a decision if it’s worth reading. The better your email looks the more chances it has of catching the attention of your subscribers, so try out a few designs to see which one get better conversion ratios.