How to increase email conversion rates

Estimated 6 minute read
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Updated Oct 18, 2024, 3:48 PM EST
You will learn

You will learn

Learn best practices around improving conversion rates so that you can grow your brand with Klaviyo. Email conversion rates measure how often subscribers become customers after engaging with your email content. When you send a campaign that results in a low conversion rate, refine your sending and focus on content that resonates best with your audience.

Note that this article focuses on email conversion rates. For SMS performance indicators, learn more about campaign SMS and MMS benchmarks.

What is a conversion rate?

What is a conversion rate?

Your conversion rate measures how often your subscribers convert to customers after receiving your email. You can set a specific conversion window in Klaviyo so that any conversion that occurs after a subscriber interacts with your email content and then purchases within that timeframe will be considered a conversion.

Below is the calculation for conversion rate in Klaviyo:

  • Conversion rate
    The number of conversions attributed to your email divided by the number of recipients.
Why conversion rates matter

Why conversion rates matter

Conversions are what drive your business, increasing your revenue and proving how valuable your owned channels truly are. Acquiring subscribers and sending great content are crucial pieces, but the most critical step in your marketing process is to convert your audience so they become loyal customers. That is why analyzing and increasing your conversion rate is so important.

Conversion rates differ depending on your industry, how new you are to email marketing, the conversion window you set in Klaviyo, and more.

How to increase conversion rates

How to increase conversion rates

Below are five strategies to increase conversion rates:

  1. Adjust your segmentation
  2. Use links wisely
  3. A/B test your messaging
  4. Improve the checkout experience
  5. Optimize flows
1. Adjust your segmentation

1. Adjust your segmentation

You should always primarily send to engaged segments to increase opens and clicks. That being said, when you level up your segmentation further, you will likely see an improvement in conversion rate as well.

Add conditions to your segments around customer interests, locations, characteristics, and more to target your messaging. To gain these insights about your customers, ask them directly via email or forms, using their responses as profile properties. For example, a buying guide form allows you to collect a variety of details about what a customer is specifically looking for when browsing your store. Their answers can help you create targeted messaging directly pertaining to those interests.

 

When you create specific and target content, you ensure that your emails go to those most interested in what you have to say. One specific strategy to increase conversions is to create a segment of low-CLV shoppers. These customers have a customer lifetime value (CLV) that is below average but still interact with your brand content; thus they are likely bargain shoppers. With this knowledge, send them special discounts to convert. Similarly, you can create a VIP segment to target with exclusive content, deals, products, and more. You can even invite these loyal VIPs to produce content and referrals that will boost conversions from new subscribers.

Learn more advanced segmentation strategies to help increase conversions.

With the release of iOS15, macOS Monterey, iPadOS 15, and WatchOS 8, Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) changed the way that we receive open rate data on your emails by prefetching our tracking pixel. With this change, it’s important to understand that open rates will be inflated.

If your campaign analytics show a large number of iOS openers, we suggest identifying these affected opens in your individual subscriber segments. You can also adjust your email conversion settings in your account to track MPP opens by default.

2. Use links wisely

2. Use links wisely

Including links in emails is crucial for customers to click and engage with your web content. That said, the links that you include should be applicable to your content and drive conversions, as this onsite activity directly relates to conversion rate.

In general, you should primarily link out to ecommerce pages of your site. If instead you link your home, blog, contact page, news article, or collections page instead of your ecommerce-related pages, you may see a drop in conversions. That is not to say you should remove all non-ecommerce links that assist your business; rather cut back and add in direct ecommerce links to help conversions grow.

In addition, keep the following best practices in mind when adding links:

  • Make them easily found and emphasized in your email design
  • Have a clear call-to-action (CTA) to encourage a click
  • Make sure all links work and lead to the correct place
  • Do not add too many links that will overwhelm subscribers
3. A/B test your messaging

3. A/B test your messaging

A/B testing is a key asset to your Klaviyo toolkit, allowing you to uncover the content, send times, and subject lines that your audience responds best to. In an A/B test, you can create multiple variations of a campaign or flow email. These variations can show different copy and creative work to a subset of your audience to test what makes them more likely to convert. You can test both content and subject lines to learn what copy leads to higher conversions.

For example, you can test what content results in a higher conversion rate within a flow: showcasing your best sellers or new collections. Alternatively, you can test how likely subscribers are to purchase after opening a campaign with a funny subject line versus a more serious one, honing in on your audience’s preferred tone.

Learn more tips and tricks to A/B testing.

4. Improve the checkout experience

4. Improve the checkout experience

Another thing to look at is the checkout experience your customers go through when purchasing from your store. If you recently changed the checkout experience in any way (e.g., added a new form or new layout), this can lead to a change in conversion rate. If you see this rate drop, consider weighing whether or not the change is worth this drop in revenue.

>Likewise, if the price of your products or shipping recently increased or you are suddenly offering fewer incentives for subscribers, you may see a drop in conversion rates. You will likely need to re-think who you target to accommodate for higher price points. For example, send higher-priced product marketing emails to a segment of high-CLV customers. Alternatively, if you decide you can no longer offer a specific discount, offer a less costly but otherwise exciting incentive — such as free shipping or the opportunity to join a VIP program with additional purchases.

If you are seeing a delay in shipping, communicate this proactively to customers. Consider including shipping information in your post purchase followup email or via forms on your site. They will be more likely to return to place another order from your store if you gave them adequate expectations from the start.

5. Optimize flows

5. Optimize flows

Flows are a great way to increase conversions with little manual lift since, once created, they automatically email subscribers when they qualify for messaging. The key flows to have live include:

In particular, abandoned cart flows are crucial for increasing your conversion rate, as someone who genuinely wants to purchase from your store may abandon their cart for a variety of reasons. Sending them a reminder message, and even a discount to purchase, raises the likelihood that they will return to place an order. According to Klaviyo's ecommerce industry benchmark report for abandoned carts, about 70% of carts are abandoned. Without this flow, you lose out on an abundance of potential conversions.

Other flows that can level up your account performance and increase conversion rates include:

Additional resources

Additional resources

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