Calculate Email Conversion Rate: The Complete Guide for 2023
As an email marketer, one of the most important metrics you need to track is your email conversion rate. But what exactly is email conversion rate, how do you calculate it, and why does it matter?
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into everything you need to know about email conversion rates. You‘ll learn the formula for calculating this critical metric, understand the key factors that influence your conversion rates, and discover proven strategies to boost your email conversions and get better results from your campaigns.
Whether you‘re new to email marketing or a seasoned pro looking to level up your skills, this guide will give you the knowledge and tools you need to master the art and science of email conversion optimization. Let‘s get started!
What Is Email Conversion Rate?
First, let‘s define what we mean by email conversion rate. Simply put, email conversion rate measures the percentage of recipients who take a desired action after receiving your email. This desired action could be making a purchase, signing up for an event, filling out a form, or any other goal you have for your email campaigns.
To calculate your email conversion rate, you divide the number of conversions from an email campaign by the total number of emails delivered. Then multiply by 100 to turn it into a percentage.
Here‘s the formula:
Email Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Number of Delivered Emails) * 100
For example, let‘s say you send an email campaign to 10,000 subscribers promoting a new product. Out of those 10,000 emails, 9,500 get delivered to inboxes (the rest bounce or fail to send). And out of those 9,500 delivered emails, 500 people click through and make a purchase.
Your conversion rate would be calculated as:
(500 conversions / 9,500 delivered emails) * 100 = 5.26%
So in this case, your email campaign achieved a conversion rate of 5.26%, meaning that 5.26% of people who received the email ended up converting.
Why Email Conversion Rate Matters
Now that you understand how to calculate email conversion rate, let‘s talk about why it matters. There are a few key reasons why every email marketer needs to be tracking and optimizing for conversions:
- It‘s a measure of your email marketing ROI. Ultimately, the goal of email marketing is to drive profitable action for your business. Your email conversion rate tells you how effective your campaigns are at achieving that goal. The higher your conversion rate, the better return you‘re getting on the time and resources you invest in email.
- It allows you to test and optimize your campaigns. Conversion rate is a key performance indicator that helps you gauge the impact of changes to your email strategy. By tracking your conversion rates over time and running A/B tests, you can identify what elements of your emails resonate with your audience and lead to more conversions.
- It helps you benchmark against industry averages. What‘s a "good" email conversion rate? It varies by industry, but looking at average benchmark data can help you see how your conversion rates stack up to others in your space. This gives you a sense of where you have room for improvement.
Key Factors That Affect Email Conversion Rates
Many different factors can impact your email conversion rates, from your subject lines to your calls-to-action. Here are some of the most important elements that can make or break your conversions:
- Subject lines: Your subject line is the first thing people see and ultimately determines whether they open your email in the first place. Boring, generic, or spammy subject lines will tank your conversions. Focus on crafting compelling, curiosity-provoking subject lines that clearly communicate the value inside.
- Email copy: The words you use in your email body copy need to hold attention, communicate value, and persuade people to take action. Great email copy is clear, concise, and focused on the reader. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and strong calls-to-action.
- Design and layout: How your email looks can be just as important as what it says. An cluttered, confusing, or off-brand email design creates friction and hurts conversions. Use a clean, skimmable layout with ample white space and visuals that reinforce your message.
- Audience segmentation: Blasting the same generic email to your entire database is a conversion killer. The more you can segment your list and tailor your messaging to each audience, the higher your conversions will be. Segment based on demographics, interests, past purchases, and email engagement.
- Email frequency and timing: Finding the right email cadence is a balancing act. Too few emails and you miss out on conversion opportunities. Too many emails and you risk annoying your subscribers and driving up unsubscribes. Test different send frequencies and times to find the sweet spot for your audience.
Average Email Conversion Rates by Industry
Curious to know how your email conversion rates compare to others in your industry? Here are some average email conversion rates segmented by industry from research by Campaign Monitor:
- Automotive: 1.9%
- B2B: 1.1%
- Education: 2.6%
- Financial Services: 1.9%
- Fitness: 0.8%
- Food & Beverage: 0.6%
- Healthcare: 1.1%
- Home & Garden: 2.6%
- Insurance: 1.8%
- Legal Services: 0.8%
- Online Retail: 1.3%
- Real Estate: 1.7%
- Technology: 1.1%
- Travel & Hospitality: 1.4%
- Overall Average: 1.5%
Keep in mind that these are just averages—there is a wide range of conversion rates within each industry. And many niche businesses often outperform their broader industry average. So while these benchmarks can be a helpful gauge, the most important thing is to focus on improving your own conversion rates over time.
5 Strategies to Boost Your Email Conversion Rates
Okay, so you understand why email conversion rates are important and what influences them. Now, how do you actually go about improving your rates? Here are five proven strategies to get more conversions from your campaigns:
1. Continuously A/B test your emails.
A/B testing, or split testing, is one of the most powerful tools in the email marketer‘s toolbox. It allows you to experiment with different subject lines, content, offers, and designs to see what gets the best response.
To run an A/B test, send two versions of your email (version A and version B) to a small portion of your list. Half gets version A, half gets version B. Then, compare the conversion rates of the two versions to determine a winner. Send the winning version to the remaining portion of your list.
Over time, these small A/B test improvements compound into major conversion rate gains. Get in the habit of A/B testing every email you send for maximum results.
2. Personalize your email messaging.
One-size-fits-all emails are a thing of the past. Today‘s consumers expect personalized, relevant messaging that speaks directly to their needs and interests. In fact, research shows that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.
Personalization goes beyond just using someone‘s first name in the subject line. It‘s about leveraging the data you have about each subscriber—their location, past purchases, email engagement, website behavior, etc.—to tailor your messaging and offers.
The more targeted and personalized your emails are, the higher engagement and conversion rates you‘ll see. Use dynamic email content, segmentation, and automated email sequences to bring more personalization to your campaigns.
3. Optimize your emails for mobile.
Over 60% of email opens now happen on mobile devices. So if your emails aren‘t optimized for small screens, you‘re likely leaving conversions on the table.
Make sure your email template uses a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes. Keep your subject lines short for mobile previews. Use a single-column layout. Make your text large and easily readable. And design your call-to-action buttons to be thumb-friendly.
It‘s also a good idea to test how your emails look on a variety of mobile devices before sending, to ensure a good user experience for all subscribers.
4. Use automated email sequences.
Automated email campaigns, also known as drip campaigns or nurture sequences, are one of the best ways to move leads down your funnel and convert them into customers.
Instead of manually sending one-off promotional emails, you set up a series of emails that automatically gets sent out to subscribers over time, based on their behavior or characteristics. For example, you might create an onboarding sequence for new subscribers, a post-purchase follow-up sequence for customers, or an abandoned cart sequence for shoppers.
These automated sequences allow you to send the right messages to the right people at the right time, without having to constantly monitor and manage your campaigns. When set up effectively, they can be powerful conversion drivers.
5. Re-engage inactive subscribers.
Even with a healthy email list, you likely have a portion of subscribers who haven‘t opened or clicked your emails in months. These inactive subscribers drag down your overall conversion rates, since they‘re not engaging with your campaigns.
That‘s where re-engagement campaigns come in. These are emails specifically designed to win back subscribers who have gone cold and get them converting again.
Re-engagement campaign ideas include:
- Sending a "we miss you" message with a special offer
- Asking subscribers to update their email preferences
- Reminding subscribers of the value your emails provide
- Running a creative winback contest or giveaway
If subscribers still don‘t respond after a re-engagement campaign, it may be time to remove them from your list to keep your conversion rates high and avoid potential spam complaints.
How to Track Email Conversions
To calculate your email conversion rates, you first need a reliable way to track the conversions from your campaigns. Here are a few common methods for tracking email conversions:
Google Analytics (GA) eCommerce Tracking
If you have an eCommerce store, you can enable GA‘s eCommerce tracking to see which email campaigns are driving sales. This requires adding some extra code to your order confirmation page, to pass purchase data back to GA. Once set up, you‘ll be able to see metrics like transactions, revenue, and conversion rate in GA‘s Conversions reports.
UTM Parameters
For non-eCommerce conversions, UTM parameters are a simple way to track people who click through from your emails. To do this, you append special UTM codes to the end of your email links that identify the source, medium, and campaign. When people click these links, the UTM codes get passed to your GA account, so you can see which campaigns are driving traffic and conversions.
Conversion Pixels
Many email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign have their own built-in conversion tracking. This usually involves placing a 1×1 conversion tracking pixel on your post-conversion page (like a thank you page or order confirmation page). The pixel fires when conversions happen and ties them back to the respective email campaign.
Email Conversion Rate Examples
To give you some inspiration, here are a few examples of email campaigns with exceptionally high conversion rates.
Abandoned Cart Campaign by Moschino
Fashion brand Moschino‘s cart abandonment email features a direct subject line, "You left something behind," and a bold hero image of the abandoned product with a clear CTA. It also offers assistance from customer support and reinforces their return policy. This campaign earned a 65% open rate and an impressive 30% conversion rate.
Winback Campaign by BarkBox
Pet supply subscription service BarkBox sends this witty "Come Back" email to subscribers who have stopped ordering. The cute dog imagery, playful tone, and attractive offer successfully re-engaged subscribers. The campaign saw an open rate over 30% and converted 14% of recipients.
Flash Sale Campaign by Bonobos
Men‘s clothing brand Bonobos ran a 24-hour flash sale exclusively for email subscribers. The campaign used an urgent subject line, "It‘s On! 24 Hours Only," and included a dynamic countdown timer and product images with "Shop Now" CTAs. It generated a 30%+ conversion rate from engaged subscribers.
Conclusion
Email conversion rate is a critical metric that every email marketer needs to be tracking and working to improve. By understanding what email conversion rate is, how to calculate it, and the various factors that influence it, you‘ll be well on your way to getting better results from your email campaigns.
Remember, there‘s no one "right" email conversion rate to aim for. Focus on implementing conversion best practices and continually testing to see what works best for your unique audience and goals.
Benchmark your current email conversion rates, implement the strategies outlined above, and commit to continuous optimization. Over time, small improvements to your email conversion rates can lead to big wins for your business.
