7 Ways To Increase Email Conversion During COVID-19
Yep, we are wearing pajama bottoms and blazers to host Zoom meetings, and maybe you’ve downloaded TikTok just to see why Trump banned it. COVID-19 has changed us! DUH. But if we’ve changed so much, it comes as no surprise that our online behavior and engagement changed as well. We are checking our email more frequently, thirsty for anything new since we already watched the entire Soprano series…twice!
Email marketing has a new kind of spotlight on it, a new attentive audience that we haven’t had before. It’s time to change strategy to match the change in consumer behavior and throw out the old rule books for email marketing.
Here is a review of email stats based on 200 million emails sent in the last 30 days (whoa, that’s a lot of emails), collected by Worldata and how to apply them to your email strategy:
1.Back-to-back promo emails boost response rate by 28%
Send an email off 2 days in a row receives a 28% boost in response rate compared to sending the offer twice within 4 days. Personally, I have seen the second offer email increase conversion by 50%.
2. Send Your Best Emails Saturday and Monday
Move Friday promos to Saturday. With COVID-19 Fridays are half days at work — no one is checking email. On Mondays people are refreshed and checked in to the email, ready to WFH.
3. Subject lines that “acknowledge the situation” increase open rate by 48%
Reference COVID-19 indirectly. The highest open rate subject lines have words indirectly related to COVID which we can test this week too:
- Fun (People really want something fun, they’re so bored)
- New (People crave something new)
- *Month*
- Open
- Job/Career
- Deserve ( people deserve something special)
4. Emails with offers that expire have 67% higher response rate
Make fast, easy promos by creating short term discount codes for specific products. Pssst! This is a good time to make a NEW promotions and then write “NEW” in your subject line.
5. Test very short and very long subject lines
Everyone is using a subject line generator that tells people to create a subject line between 20–65 characters which means all these subject lines look the same in an inbox at a glance.Subject lines with less than 20 characters have seen a 27% increase in open rate. Subject lines with MORE than 65 characters have seen a 15% increase in open rate.
6.Adding a GIF to your email increased clicks by 31%
Gifs work especially well when you are writing a personalized email directly from a sales associate, they add the perfect touch of authenticity. Be careful to use GIFs your audience will understand and relate to!
7. 27% of all clicks are on the logo at the top of your email
That means your logo should link directly to the offer of the email. Don’t lead them to the home page or you’ll lose the opportunity to convert. This isn’t new, this is just something you should be doing if you haven’t been!
BONUS TIP: Looking for more up to date email knowledge? Worldata provides free information for marketers just like you and me. Two of my favorite free tools the offer is their Subject Line Rater at subjectline.com and their Email Marketing Calendar.
