3 Simple Ways To Increase Engagement in Your Email Campaign
Discover key strategies to boost your email marketing conversion rates through our comprehensive A/B testing insights, including personalized recommendations, design improvements, and targeted segments.
May 15, 2024
You might wonder, “Our campaigns look good BUT why do they have low conversions?” or “Are our conversion rates good or bad?”Typically, DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) brands get 30% of their revenue from email marketing. Of this, 50% comes from automated emails, triggers like sending welcome coupons, cart abandonment notices, or product recommendations. The other 50% comes from manual emails, such as newsletters, educational content, new arrivals, or promotions. If your email marketing isn’t hitting these benchmarks, our experimental insight should help. We ran several A/B tests and identified key strategies to boost email campaign engagement. Here are a few:
- Personalized product recommendations: Increased order rates by 1.6X
- Well-designed emails: Boosted click-through rates by 1.3X
- Targeted audience segments: Achieved 1.9X better engagement than the average
Implementing these strategies can help you improve your email marketing performance.
Adding personalized item recommendations increased the order rate.
Most of our customers already send generic emails like newsletters and promotional emails. As mentioned above, generic emails can contribute up to 15% of your total revenue. If your results are below this, there may be room for improvement.
Some DTC brands try to improve performance by simply sending more emails. This strategy can work if you are not emailing frequently. However, if you are already sending emails regularly, adding another newsletter each week may not make a difference and could even lead to customer fatigue.
Personalized recommendations increased order rate by 1.6X
One simple and effective way to generate extra revenue is to add a recommendation section at the end of your emails. Through A/B testing with our customers, we found that emails with a recommendation section increased the order rate by an average of 1.6 times. While the optimal number of items to recommend may vary, the presence of a recommendation section consistently boosted the order conversion rate in our tests without exception.
Well-designed email increased the open rate
Well-designed email creatives might sound vague. However, we have walked through with clients on what constitutes as a well-designed email campaign.
Adding key-item descriptions boosted CTR by 1.3X
Adding key descriptions to a specific item-related email increased the click-through rate by 1.3 times compared to one without. Some of our customers have sent emails only with product images and shopping buttons for simplicity. However, customers might not be fully interested when they don’t know what the value the items provide. We found that adding key minimal information about the items, such as a main copy, sub-copies, and key descriptions, worked better. Customers need key information to get interested.
Iconic designs perform better than text-only descriptions
Our tests showed that iconic designs have a 1.6 times better click-through rate than text-only descriptions. Initially, we thought more information might reduce effectiveness, but conveying the benefits of the item using iconic designs proved more effective.
However, optimization focusing solely on open and click rates does not necessarily translate to increased orders.
Our team explored various hypotheses for improving engagement, one of which involved a promotional email campaign. In the control group, customers were informed about the +1 promotion in both the subject line and content, while the treatment group had no prior knowledge.
Interestingly, despite observing a 1.12 times higher open rate and a 6 times higher click-through rate in the treatment group, the control group outperformed in purchase rate.
Enhancing Engagement Through Targeted Segmentation
If you already run email marketing, you may agree that engagement doesn't naturally improve. These numbers barely improve unless you actively intervene. Indeed, the numbers often decrease due to bounces, spam, or unsubscribing, which are all related to customer fatigue.
Targeted segmentation lifts engagement by 1.9X
We built an AI model to identify the most relevant email recipients for various purposes in both automated and manual campaigns, achieving 1.9 times higher engagement across all funnels. For instance, customers who are interested in new arrivals, should be the primary target for newsletters featuring new arrivals and/or pre-launch promos. It’s unnecessary to email customers who are unlikely to make a purchase at that moment.
In conclusion,
After conducting customized A/B testing of email campaigns with our DTC brand partners, we’ve pinpointed several impactful optimizations that significantly enhance engagement and conversion rates. Implementing personalized product recommendations, refining email designs, and targeting pertinent customer segments have all resulted in notable improvements for brands.
Our commitment to ongoing dynamic testing with clients ensures that we continuously uncover valuable insights. If you’re interested in staying informed about our latest email marketing findings, you can sign up below to gain exclusive access before they’re publicly shared!
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