3 components to conversion optimization in email
Optimizing conversions is an important topic for any marketer, especially given the many components that can make up a strategy. It was no surprise this was a heavily discussed topic at this year’s Email Insider’s Summit in Portugal, organized by MediaPost.
I had the opportunity to join an expert team of digital marketers at the event to discuss optimizing conversions in the email channel. The session was moderated by Kath Pay, Marketing Director of cloud.IQ and I was joined on the panel by: Panos Melissaropoulos, co-founder of Moosend and Kay Kerman, an email marketing consultant.
Our discussion focused on three key areas of conversion optimization: testing, personalization and persuasion– which the panel agreed need to be part of any conversion optimization strategy. When thinking about how you can get started consider these main takeaways from the session:
Optimize your testing strategy
Design your test plan by using a hypothesis to assist in gaining a statistically confident result. Clarify your marketing objectives and build your hypothesis to measure success.
Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with project goals and desired customer behavior. It is important to understand your objective and how this objective is to be measured. For example, if your campaign is designed to reactivate inactive email subscribers, the open rate is a key performance indicator but might not be the only one. Sometimes, success metrics can be a combination of factors. Conversion, for example, can be measured through the click-through rate, conversion rate, purchases, re-purchase rate and registrations.
Experimentation should be structured and routine. Test roadmaps are aligned on a regular basis to program goals and to ensure control groups are consistent over time. Key learnings should then be shared and applied across programs.
Why personalization in email matters
Personalization is not segmentation. However, both can be used to achieve the same marketing objective: speaking to the right customer, at the right time, with the right message and at the right place.
Marketing segmentation is a way of grouping customers who have similar needs and behaviors, so that each group can be individually targeted using tailored messaging. Personalization is the use of data (profile, historical and situational data) to deliver a tailored, adaptive and sometimes predictive consumer experience across multiple channels and devices. Technology and automation can help in achieving the best personalization results.
The factor of persuasion
Psychological, social and emotional factors can influence a customer response to marketing messages. Decisions can be made unconsciously by our customers and prospective customers, so how can we better understand the ways in which people make decisions in order to influence them?
Make sure to set up a journey and define your marketing touchpoints to provide a streamlined experience. In digital marketing, customers will abandon the road to conversion if it becomes too complex.
Conversion optimization can be challenging, especially as the consumer’s path to purchase becomes more complex and less linear. Starting with these three components will help you successfully navigate your own path to conversion optimization. Do you have conversion optimization challenges? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
