#57. 4 Proven Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

Today we will be talking about 4 proven e-commerce conversion rate optimization hacks.

Alissa: 0:46

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to episode number 57 of email Einstein, a podcast by Flowium. Vira and Alissa here we are, two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium and we are so passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share all of our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium full service email e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and designed specifically to help increase your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And Vira, take us away for this highly anticipated episode.

Vira: 1:34

Highly anticipated. Aren’t they all? I feel like we say it every time but we do get a lot of questions every time. We’re like preparing for the episode. That’s like the topic that I know our clients are curious to know more about and our listeners. So yes, it is highly anticipated. So today we will be talking about 4 proven e commerce conversion rate optimization hacks, specifically about email optimization hacks. And something that we do believe in is that email is the long term game and we are here and we are playing the long term game. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t opportunities to hack that growth. Right? And that’s exactly what we will be talking today about. And I know that we don’t have any pro tips of the week this week for you just because this entire episode is going to be one big pro tip. Right Alissa?

Alissa: 2:47

Yep. Yeah, sometimes I think Vira and I get a little too over excited about the content that we are covering for the day and so we flood your ears and your brains with all this information and we’re nerds and we love what we do and we love all the content and all the information and all the knowledge, but it can be overwhelming. So we’re trying to step it back a little bit and make sure that we’re giving enough, just enough, but not too much, so that people leave the podcast episode and they’re like, that’s cool. I feel like I just went to like six years of school about email marketing, so right down a little bit. So this entire episode is a pro tip. But yeah, it’s. It’s still full. It’s still full of good stuff. So have no idea.

Vira: 3:29

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So strategy number one, you can experiment with. And that’s something that I personally do for my clients all the time. Alissa, I know that you experiment a lot with incentives as well. So number one, experiment with different incentive structures. So there are like, when it comes to incentives, there are basically two rules that we are using in Flowium. Number one, only give discounts that create more sales. And number two, don’t give discounts to customers who are going to buy anyway. That’s why we are very, very careful with giving away dollar discounts, percentage discount, just because we don’t want to train our customers and your customers to expect that sweet discount from you. Right. And discounts aren’t for everyone. I have clients who don’t do discounts and it’s like totally up to you whether use them or not. However, there is a big opportunity for you when you are trying to compare like different structures and different approaches. And your discount strategy should always depend on your business goals and basically on your individual visitors. And maybe you want to discounted items to clear out the inventory and stuff. But here are some things that I personally tried. Here are some ideas for A/B testing. So first, first, and this is kind of a big one. A/B test, dollar discount versus percentage discount.

Alissa: 4:58

Oh yeah, we’ve talked about this a lot.

Vira: 5:00

We’ve talked about it. And I cannot emphasize enough how big of a difference you might see with a dollar versus percentage discount. And something that we already discussed is that depending on your audience, dollar or percentage might perform better. So there is no like one rule like use dollar or use percentage for example, for my brands. For boomers, sometimes percentage works better for them because they are so good with math that they can like calculate that, okay, so 20% of 150 bucks product is actually more than $20 off. Right? So they are good with math. So for them it works better. However, here’s the fun sort of like thing that we’ve noticed. We looked at open rate performance across like different Industries and very often for fashion and apparel, open rates were for dollar off promotions. And I don’t know why this is how it works, but I’ve noticed it with so many of my clients. So for this guy’s dollar off promotions work much, much better. However, for the health and fitness industry and sometimes the beauty brands as well, the open rates, click through rates and obviously the revenue were much, much higher in the percentage of promotion. And I started like googling it and I found this really cool article from Klaviyo where they say that yeah, depends on the industry. But very often for industry like health and fitness, the percentage off works much better. But for example for like home goods, the $1 worked better. So there is no like one correct or like wrong way to go. Right. So test it out. Experiment with your customers. The easiest way to do that would probably be to send the campaign just like one off campaign. That’s what I did with my clients. And 50% of your customers will receive the dollar and 50% will rece receive a percentage of discount and see how it performs. Do some more testing. Obviously it’s very hard to tell from one campaign. It probably will not be very statistically significant. But experiment. And you guys, you can see the biggest growth from testing that thing alone. And yeah, and the other cool strategy that we like recently used and I’m really excited about this one, we will be launching this flow very soon. Basically we will have a limited amount of discounts and we will announce that we have only 100 discounts available and only first 100 people will be able to use this discount to claim their first product. Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a pretty, pretty cool strategy. I’m really looking forward to it. And actually if they couldn’t use that discount code, they will receive a next email with a basically like a different discount code for the entire website.

Alissa: 7:49

Wait, is this something you set up? Vira, that’s so cool. Oh my gosh.

Vira: 7:52

Yeah, yeah, it’s going live like any day now. But basically we have a very high hopes for this flow and I will let you guys know how it, how it goes. So be creative with your incentive structure. Incentive doesn’t even mean the discount. Sometimes you can provide the freebie, sometimes you can give the access to like an exclusive Facebook community or something. Be creative. And A/B test. I feel like this episode should have been named like an 4 proven A/B testing strategies or something because that’s what we’ll be talking about. But yeah, calculate your conversion rate and you want to make sure that the incentive works for, for your group specifically.

Alissa: 8:34

I love it. I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. And yeah, we probably should have renamed this episode something different. No kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding. Okay, so number two, experiment with subject lines. So again, this goes back into that A/B testing idea, right? So here internally, and what a lot of us do with our clients is we test subject lines pretty frequently because that’s something that’s so easy to set up an A/B test for. And it’s very telling and it really has a very quick and effective way of increasing, or if it goes in the opposite way, decreasing your open rates. So essentially what we typically do is we will pull a campaign, we’ll duplicate that same campaign within itself, and then what we’ll do is we will send 50% of the subscriber list one subject line, and then the other 50% will be the other subject line. And typically the test is something along the lines of like, tone, like quirkiness or wittiness, if there’s an offer that’s included in that subject line, anything like that. And so that’s typically how we test the actual subject line. The other thing that is really important to keep in mind when you are testing the subject lines, and if you’re not sure whether you should test it or not, 69% of people who actually report an email as spam, they only do so because of the subject line that’s included alone.

Vira: 9:55

That’s crazy.

Alissa: 9:56

And that’s pretty problematic, right? And that just goes to show how important that subject line is, because it’s your first impression and first impressions are everything. So if you don’t give a good first impression just based off your subject line alone, if you’re not testing that actively, if you’re not figuring out what it is that your audience is responsive to, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot in the long run. And you’re also going to negatively impact your deliverability over the course of time. So a couple of just kind of key steps to think of or key factors to think of in terms of your subject lines. Make sure that they’re not too long. So you should never, ever go over one sentence. Usually, subject lines with about 5 ish words tend to perform the best. And when they did a study on that, they saw that there was about a 15.9, so roughly 16% increase in open rates, which doesn’t sound crazy, but if you’re hanging out at like the 16 or the 8% rate, and now you just bumped up by 16%. You’re now looking at a 24% open rate, which is really, really good. Make sure that your subject lines are personalized. Those help a lot. So for a lot of these ESPs, they’ll have a dynamic code that you can include in your subject line that either refers to the person by their name, their first name direct, or it’ll have a default. So instead of saying, like, hey, Vira, it’ll say, hey, friend, anything like that. The same way that we can personalize the internal copy of the email, you can also do so for the subject line. So make sure that you test that out to see people are very responsive to their name.

Vira: 11:22

Right.

Alissa: 11:22

Whenever you address someone, you say, hi, Vira. How’s it going, Vira? Not, hey, you, how’s it going, you? When you use these, like, very generic terms of endearment, and I’m saying that in quotes, endearment towards people, there’s always this thing of, like, do you actually know my name? Like, do you even know who I. I am? It’s kind of like the guy who’s, like, cheating on his girlfriend or the guy who has, like, multiple girlfriends, and it’s like, hey, babe. Hey, babe. Hey, babe. But that’s him referring to all three girlfriends. That doesn’t work, right? That can’t work. You have to call people by their first name, or else they think you’re cheating on them. Okay. And again, using a subscriber’s name in the subject line, it can actually have the potential to increase your open rates by 50%. So, again, going back to that personalization side of things, it’s that relevance, right, that people are looking for. Like, do you actually know me as your customer? Do you care about me? Are you just sending me a random email? Well, by calling them by their first name, it will feel a lot less like it’s just a random email and a lot more like it’s an email catered specifically to them. And millennials actually tend to be the segment that are more likely to engage with personalized emails, as we’re kind of gearing more towards millennials, Gen Z, gen Y, all the gens, whoever it is, that’s always on their phone and always on their laptop or their desktop or whatever it is, constantly checking their email, you to start making sure that you’re targeting the right audience. I think with boomers, you’d probably freak them out a little bit if you included their first name, because they’d be like, oh, my gosh, there’s a wiretap in my house. Someone Spy on me. But for millennials, like, we understand what it’s like, and it just feels a little more personalized. So making sure that you’re testing that kind of thing with your subject lines. And the other thing that is, and this is interesting, it’s controversial to me because I don’t always agree with this. So indicating value, I think there’s a really nice way of doing this. And then I think there’s a really cheesy or tacky way of doing this. Your subject line should imp what level of value your email is going to provide for them. So letting subscribers know that there’s something in it for them if they open the email. There is a very good way to do that, and there’s a very not great way to do that. And the not great way to do that is like, please open this email now. We’re going to give you a sale, sale, sale. Everything’s free. Get it off like it’s desperate. That is desperate. But letting people know, hey, there’s a secret surprise in here for you, or something like that, as long as it’s on brand in terms of, like, tonality and language, then there is a really cheeky, kind of almost cute way to get people to open your emails. There was one email that Chubby’s actually sent out, Gosh, I think it was like last weekend or something, And I busted out laughing. And I had to open the email because I was like, what in heck is this? Where the subject line was just a bunch of jumbled letters. And then underneath the preview text said, sorry, I fell asleep on my keyboard and I died.

Vira: 14:09

Oh, my goodness, I love it.

Alissa: 14:11

It was so funny. It was so, so funny. And I was like, wow, that’s really smart. Like, even a little bit of humor that didn’t even necessarily tell me what’s in the email. It just got me to laugh so much that I was like, I have to open this. You know, so there are definitely different ways that you can play around with the subject lines. And guys, the other thing just to note is, as data privacy changes are taking place in the upcoming months, now is the time to test your subject lines, because it’s going to get to a point where people are going to start changing their settings on their phones. And anyone who uses Apple Mail, they’re not going to let you as the sender, know if they’re opening your email emails or not. And so right now is a really good time to understand what it is that your audience is receptive to. So then that way, once the Data privacy changes take place, you’re not impacted so heavily. So right now more than ever, experiment with your subject lines. That’s your second proven E commerce conversion rate optimization hack.

Vira: 15:07

Yeah. As I really love that video that Klaviyo created about the new Apple and Google policies. They call it less, less stalking, more talking. And basically now it’s all about talking to people and like asking them directly, hey, what do you want? What do you like, what do you want more of and what do you want less of? And at first I was like super scared of this new policies as an email marketer, but now I’m kind of looking forward and I’m looking forward to that.

Alissa: 15:37

So it’s a challenge, right? It’s a challenge.

Vira: 16:07

It’s a challenge. I feel like we should record like a separate, separate podcast just about those policies alone because there’s like so many people who want to learn. You guys. We are totally doing that, right Alissa?

Alissa: 16:18

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we’re going to need to do it. We need to let everybody know what’s going on.

Vira: 16:22

Yeah, yeah. It’s not as scary as you think. There is like a lot of opportunities in it. So yeah. So let’s, let’s record something fun in the meantime. The third strategy you can experiment with is actually dynamic content. So number three is experiment with dynamic content to leverage the fear of missing out. FOMO and fomo. The fear of missing out is very common consumer emotion among the marketers. Right. Marketers and advertisers use it all the time and they like tap into the emotions of their customers. And just like you said, Alissa, it can be very cheesy, but it can be tasteful and cute as well. So one thing that we love experimenting with is actually the countdown clocks. So countdown timers, they can be added directly into your emails. And there are a ton of apps that can help you do that. There are several third party apps that we personally use. This services basically allow you to input the parameters of your timer. So like how long you would like to run it for, et cetera, and produce like a little snippet, like a code that you will add to your Klaviyo or whatever platform you’re using template. And that code, it will actually be dynamic. So that countdown timer, it will actually be dynamic. Yes. There is a way to do it like statically you can create like a fake countdown timer. But we’ve seen a big, big success with this like countdown timers. So look into them and definitely A/B test with versus without the countdown timer.

Alissa: 17:58

Yeah, they help a lot. I’ve seen those help a lot of clients out.

Vira: 18:02

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And this like app called I think Centric and Countdown Mail, there’s like a ton of them that you can use really well for your emails. And we specifically use this pop ups for our or not pop ups, this countdown timers for our flash sales. And for fourth of July we used one for Black Friday. This is an amazing, amazing tool to play with. So go ahead and A/B test, you will see the biggest difference, believe me. Yeah. Another dynamic email content that you can sort of play with is actually basically any part of campaign. In Klaviyo it can be dynamic and to create personalized emails, you can create dynamic content based on customers location, gender, age, et cetera. So you can do it in Klaviyo through dynamic content blocks. And basically in Klaviyo, I don’t know about the other platforms, but in Klaviyo every element that you add to your campaign, you have a choice of making it either static or dynamic. By default all of the blocks are static, but you can, you can play with them and you can for example, change the hero image based on where the customer is viewing the email from or you can change the, I don’t know, like the header based on whether it’s a male or female or dynamic product. Blogs. That’s like an amazing, amazing tool very often overlooked. So definitely experiment with dynamic content and leverage that follow. That’s for sure. That’s a good one.

Alissa: 19:36

Yeah, no, and it’s true. That is so overlooked. Like I feel like a lot of us, even internally we forget that that’s something that you can use where you basically make a block either visible or invisible depending on a specific property that someone has set to their profile. So I love, I wish I had utilized that more in the past, but I know that’s definitely something that I’m going to start doing more and more in the future. And the other nice thing about something like that because so just kind of thinking forward, right to these privacy changes, something that, that customizes the dynamic content within an email that is based on information that you already have about a subscriber, right? So whenever you create like the preference page or like that preferences hub, whatever it is that you call it the customization page or where people can choose what kind of emails they’re getting, you can actually ask them to plug in some important relevant information about them, right? What’s your gender, how old are you, what’s your age range, where are you located, that kind of thing. So then that way you can start to add or take away blocks based on this information that the subscriber or the customer has actually put in about themselves. So even with the data privacy changes, if you have that information that I think we’re now referring to as customer first data, instead of third party data, you’re using information that you’ve gotten directly from the customer that they’ve essentially given you permission to have about them. So it makes it all the cooler because it’s like, hey, you know, like, Sally Jo in Washington gave me this information about her and now I have it, and now I’m sending her really cool emails that are based on the information that she’s given me about her. And Sally Jo will appreciate it. You know, the fact that you’ve actually taken into consideration that she’s a woman and she’s 40 and she lives in Washington and you’re sending her content that’s around focused around that. Right.

Vira: 21:20

So people do want to hear from you. They just don’t want to be spammed by you.

Alissa: 21:24

Exactly.

Vira: 21:25

They want a relevant information. That’s for sure.

Alissa: 21:27

Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And now we are on the fourth strategy. So the fourth is to strategize your unsubscribe process effectively. And this is kind of a big one because I’ve personally experienced when someone or a brand does not do this well. And honestly, as the other end, like as the consumer, it makes me so mad. And even more so as someone who knows what this looks like and how you. You can just make it easier on consumers or customers. It’s really frustrating. It’s a. It’s one of my little pet peeves that I hold near and dear to my heart. So make sure that you don’t hold your subscribers as hostages. This is so frustrating. Don’t hide your unsubscribe link, guys. It’s. That’s like just so. Yeah, it’s not okay. There is no part of it that’s okay. And yes, it breaks our hearts too, when anyone receives that unsubscribe button click and your customer either gets suppressed or just manually removed from your list, or however it is that your ESP handles it. It really, really is a bummer. But if your recipients can’t find where to go to unsubscribe, they may end up just marking your email as spam instead, which is 1,000 times worse. Like, there is literally no comparison because you can always try and retarget these people who have unsubscribed later on down the line to get them to opt back in. But if enough people mark you with spam because they can’t find your unsubscribe link, you’re going to cause issues for yourself. Major issues unsubscribe link. It should be somewhere clear and visible at the bottom of your email. However, don’t make it so. One click Easy to unsubscribe. On the unsubscribe page, make sure that you include an option to adjust email frequency or adjust preferences. Adjust what it is that they hear from you just so you can reclaim those who are kind of on the fence about unsubscribing. You know, like maybe you sent out an email that was a little risky and Sally Joan Washington is like, whoa, you know, I’m not like, like that, guys. But rather than making Sally Jo just completely unsubscribe, you give her the option like, hey, do you like these kind of risky emails? Or do you want us just to send you the stuff that’s relevant to Washington and she can say, listen, I’m just about Washington. Like everything else, I’m out. So in that case, you don’t lose Sally Jo completely. And actually she might have a little more respect for you and your brand because you gave her a choice. Also, you need to make it hard to say no. Yeah, so you can kind of unsubscribe your customers for them as well. If you’ve been told how over and over how important your email list is to your business, collect every email you can at all costs. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Just collecting people for the sake of collecting people. It’s not worth it. Not at all. It’s really inconsiderate. And you do have to have a level of consideration for your subscribers. Right, because they are people too. Even though you just see the email and that’s all you think of is this customer is an email. More emails equals good. More emails equals money. You’re removing that humanity aspect or the humanitarian aspect of your email list. Right? Those are people. Those email addresses are their personal information. And so if they want to go, let them go. We actually use a sunset flow here internally where we basically leave. We use it as a list hygiene flow. So basically what we do is we have a series of three emails that a subscriber who has not opened an email, hasn’t clicked in an email, hasn’t really engaged with email in the last three months. We give them three months of consistent emails to engage. If they don’t, then we put them through the Sunset flow. And they have three email opportunities to open the email and claim themselves as engaged Again. If someone gets suppressed at the end of that flow, it’s a good thing. It’s okay to say bye sometimes. And it’s really silly just for you to maintain emails just for the sake of a potential sale that may happen in like 15 years. It’s just not worth it. And if someone really wants to buy from you, they will go back onto your website and find you and buy from you. So those are just some, some things that you can do in order to strategize how your unsubscribe process goes. The other thing is, yes, we get it. It’s sad to lose someone. It’s sad to see someone unsubscribe. Honestly, a lot of our clients internally, they kind of have this mini panic attack when someone gets suppressed at the end.

Vira: 25:49

I know, right?

Alissa: 25:50

Like they think it’s over, you know, and it’s not. It’s going to be okay. Because the other thing is, part of what your email marketing strategy is, is your email marketing strategy should, should be one element in your multifaceted marketing strategy. So part of what we do in the email strategies that we offer to clients is we also encourage customers to engage with the brand on Facebook, on Instagram, go onto their website, sign up for their loyalty program, sign up for as many things as possible. Because even when a customer unsubscribes from you from your emails, you still have access to them via Instagram, via Facebook, via TikTok, if that’s what you’re rolling with these days. There are different avenues that you can still engage with. Your customer is on. And so don’t make it so that email is like the end all, be all. When you lose an email address, like that’s the end of it. It’s not the end of it. It’s going to be okay. It’s likely that that customer just really isn’t into either your emails or just email in general. And that’s all right.

Vira: 26:47

Yeah, agree. Go and hang out where your customers are. That’s what we always suggest.

Alissa: 26:53

Exactly. So. And it’s just important to do that because you will over time increase the overall value of your active customer subscriber list. So make sure that when you’re, you’re spending all that time and potentially money on creating these beautiful emails with amazing messaging, that everything’s so on brand that you’re actually sending it to people who care. Because spending all that time and effort into a beautiful email marketing strategy that’s perfect, you know, and then you send it to a bunch of people who literally could not care less. It’s a huge waste of your time. So don’t waste your time.

Vira: 27:25

For sure, and if you guys want to learn more about how to create effective email preference pages to reduce unsubscribes, we actually have an episode about it and it’s episode number 30. We’ll link it in the description box below. So go and listen to it. That one was one of my favorites actually, so check it out. Yeah, so, so here you have it, the four little or not so little strategies to try today. So experiment with your different incentive structures, experiment with your subject lines and strategize the unsubscribe process and experiment with dynamic content to leverage. We do believe that marketing is a long game, but there is always a way to hack some things. So go and play with email marketing. It’s so much fun.

Alissa: 28:13

And that’s why we’re nerds about it, because we love it. Guys, thank you so much as always for joining us every week, week after week. We love you and we appreciate you. Don’t forget to leave us a review if you like what we do on this podcast. And also don’t forget that if you do leave us a review, make sure you screenshot it and send our way via email either alissa@flowium.com or vira@flowium.com when you send us a screenshot of your review, we will send you a pair of Flowium socks. We actually just voted internally on what the final socks will be and we have them and they are amazing. So make sure that you leave a review so you can get a pair. I’m like, can I leave six reviews so I can have six pairs? And also as always guys, if you are interested in getting some more advice on on how to establish a solid email marketing strategy for your e commerce business, make sure that you visit us at flowium.com/contact. You can sign up for a free consultation. You’ll chat with one of us over at Flowium and we’ll give you the goods. We’ll give you some insights on what you should be doing.

Vira: 29:23

And next Tuesday we’ll be talking about newsletters. You can love them, you can hate them, but you cannot ignore them. That’s for sure. So next week we will be talking about a few ways on how to create an email email marketing newsletter that people actually read and that people actually love. So come back. I’m really excited about this one. We have already started preparing for it so a lot of good stuff coming your way next Tuesday.

Alissa: 29:48

I love it, love it, love it, love it. Thank you guys so much. And we’ll see you next week.

Vira: 29:52

Thank you so much. Bye.