Are your emails not converting? These could be the 3 mistakes you’re making

If email is one of the channels you use to establish your brand, way to go. It’s an excellent platform to share your knowledge, start conversations, and expand your influence. But email marketing is more than that – its primary focus remains to generate conversions. If your emails aren’t converting at the level you expected, you may be making at least one of these mistakes. Keep reading – they’re easy to fix and we’ll tell you exactly how to do that.

You don’t pay enough attention to your copy 

Think about the last time you were on the fence of buying something. What was it that finally made you click that “add to cart” button or put the product in your shopping basket? Chances are, it was a well-written copy. A few lines of text – or maybe just a few words – that resonated with you and convinced you it was worth making the purchase. That’s how copy works: it either makes or breaks your sales. So, if you feel like it needs some improvement, here are three ways to make it more powerful:

• no matter how serious your industry, use a conversational tone. That doesn’t make you less professional, it just helps you better connect with people.
• be concise and laser-focused on your message: cut out any words you can do without and let all your sentences bring home your main idea.
• summarize that main idea in a compelling call-to-action (CTA). This is the most important part of your email copy, the one that gets those people on the fence to click and buy.

Even the best content can fall flat if you don’t manage to find the right words to present it. Without great copy, there’s no marketing. So, take an honest look at your emails to see how you can maximize the power of your words.

You use a messy email list

Let’s say you got your email ready – your template looks beautiful and you’re so happy with your copy. You hit “send” and all you get in return is a bunch of bounces. If your bounce rate is higher than 2% – 3%, you may also hear from your Email Service Provider (ESP), and it’s not going to be good news. Many ESPs will suspend you until you clean your list.
Keeping invalid, abuse or temporary addresses in your database doesn’t do you any good. In fact, it hurts your sender reputation and your deliverability. The messier your list is, the fewer people will receive your campaigns. And when you think about how easy this problem is to fix, it makes you wonder why you haven’t fixed it already.
How?

By using an email validation system to prune off those invalid addresses, along with spam traps, catch-alls, abuse, and disposable emails. They’re all sabotaging your conversions.
Here are two ways in which you can employ an email validation service:

• in bulk: most of these services don’t require any download, so you can just run your list through the system and get it back clean
• in real time: once you pick the right service, you receive an email validation API key that you can install on your signup forms.

You don’t A/B test

You probably hear a lot about A/B testing in email marketing and for good reason. It’s a practice that gives businesses a real chance to improve by painting a clear picture of their performance.
How can you implement it? By creating two versions of the same email and paying attention to your metrics (open, click-through and conversion rates) to see which one performs better.
What can you A/B/ test in your email campaigns? Everything! Your subject lines, CTAs, fonts, and colors, even the tone of your voice. There’s one thing you have to keep in mind, though: make sure you don’t test several elements simultaneously. Experiment with one at a time and allow your campaigns to reach their true engagement potential. Gather and study the metrics in a couple of weeks. Some people won’t open your emails right away, so when it comes to A/B testing, don’t do it in a rush.
Depending on the size of your list, you can deploy an A/B test by splitting your list in half and emailing the subscribers variations of your content. If you want to get into more detail, you can run a test by segmenting your list based on:

• location
• gender
• purchase history
• shopping behavior

The results will speak for themselves: you’ll know exactly how your emails need to look and sound to increase conversions.