Conversions in Email Marketing

In email marketing, as in eCommerce, we’re concerned with conversions. This is the reason that we measure open and click rates in email marketing.

What is a conversion in email marketing

A conversion is the objective of the email campaign we send. Understanding the reason that we send email marketing is important. The objective defines our email marketing strategy (including design, how often we send a campaign, how we segment our list and so on).

Conversions mean varying things to different organizations. A charity or not-for-profit may classify a conversion as either a donation, a willingness to volunteer or a myriad of other things. A conversion for a business may mean a sale or even submitting a contact form.

Click rates and email marketing

Open and click rates aren’t generally the ultimate measure of our marketing effectiveness. A click is seldom considered a conversion as a link in an email campaign is a redirect to another webpage, file or email message. Once the subscriber has clicked a link in the email message then they are able to complete the conversion (e.g. the recipient will only be able to complete a purchase once they’ve clicked from your email campaign to the selling website).

Open rates and click rates are however extremely important. Click rates in particular tell us what information people are interested in and if, ultimately, they find value in our communication. Open rates tell us if people are interested in reading what we have to say (people aren’t going to open an email message if they aren’t interested in our communication at all).

Ways to improve Mailchimp conversions

Here is a very simple recipe to define what you want to achieve (i.e. what you consider a conversion) and add that to an email campaign:

1. What is your ultimate goal of sending email marketing? Examples include; a sale, a donation and a lead (contact form entry).
2. Put yourself in your subscribers ‘shoes’; what will make your subscriber click to learn more about what you’re writing (i.e. what will make them click and then perform the conversion as defined previously).
3. Create your email campaign with the above two items already defined.
4. View your reports and change your content for subsequent campaigns based on where people have clicked on your campaign. If you have a large number of contacts try A/B testing to determine what will work best in achieving more conversions.

Remember to always keep in mind the objective of your email marketing and let your email marketing strategy be dictated by the objective. Your improved conversion rates will then follow.