If your emails aren't converting, this may be the reason why

“Our emails don’t convert as well as we hoped.”

That’s a distilled version of what my then-prospects, now-clients, told me when we met for a disco call.

They all built decent-sized lists, sent emails consistently, and have reputable brands with good solutions that sell. 

But somehow, their emails were not pulling their weight.

When I dove into their Email Service Providers, I discovered that they all had the same 3 problems:

1. Yes, they sent emails consistently, but their frequency was far too low to stay top of mind

2. They all felt same old-same old and looked almost identical to their competitors’ emails, so there was no way for their emails to truly stand out

3. Each one of their emails included way too many links - we’re talking about anywhere between 5 to 30+ links in one (!) email.

   
   

Let’s focus on the third point today, because I see this all the time.

“Look at this newsletter you folks sent for a second,” I pulled out a 2-month-old email during a standing meeting with one of the busy CEOs who hired me. I already audited their emails and analyzed their subscriber engagement style and patterns.

“You’re not your emails’ audience, we know that, but if you had to put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes, how would you read this email?”

They looked confused.

“Let me help you out here,” I said, “you open this email, and it looks like a few other newsletters you received from other companies this month already. But let’s put this issue aside, because you can see an interesting topic or photo that catches your eye. So you click on that link and get to a website with an article you’d like to read. Great. Then you get a message or a phone call, which seems important. You take that call, it’s a pretty quick one. And then you remember another task that needs your attention and is somewhat urgent. Would you read that article later?”

“Unlikely,” they said, “I might get back to that one, but probably only weeks later, when I have a moment to spare and the mental capacity to give it a read. But knowing myself, I’ll just close that tab and never get back to it. I’m too overwhelmed as it is.”

“And the email?” I asked.

“What about it?” they replied.

“Would you go back to reading the email you received, the one with the link to the article?” I clarified.

“No,” they said without hesitation, “That email is most likely in my trash folder by now.”

“That’s exactly how your audience* is behaving. They might be clicking on the first couple of links they see at the top of your emails, which send them to websites - most aren’t even yours, and they don’t get back to reading the rest of your emails.”

I continued, “It’s great that you want to nurture your audience, I’m all for it. But if you want to convert more subscribers from your emails, this type of curated newsletter is missing the mark. Your audience needs guidance and focus, and they’re yearning for it.”

Instead of curated emails with a gazillion links that were sent out too far apart, we broke down each curated email into a more digestible read, with one topic and one call to action (repeated several times across the email, but all redirecting to the same link).

As a result, one client who is now following this approach AND is sending sales-specific emails has seen a 187% increase in traffic to their landing pages in June alone, compared to April (before we switched to the new approach). 

Their emails are responsible for 60.23% of that traffic growth. 

If you’re sending emails consistently, it’s easy to spot what your audience is more (or less) into and discover their engagement patterns. 

So it’s possible that you’re sending the wrong type of emails for your goals, and confusing your audience in the process.

If that sounds like your experience and you know that you must improve your newsletters’ results yesterday, let’s have a chat about what’s possible with your email marketing.

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* I can’t emphasize this enough - what’s right for a certain audience might be the completely wrong approach for another. My clients had plenty of data before this change in approach to support this new hypothesis, which is why it has been so successful. At the same time, I also have a client where we took the exact opposite approach and added a bunch of links to each one of their emails. And their emails’ engagement has been growing ever since.

It all depends on how your audience behaves and which goal your emails are trying to achieve.