From my experience in email marketing for clients, email conversion does not depend on the sender name, the subject line or even the message itself.

Email conversion depends entirely on the subscriber.

• Yes, the proper sender name/email and subject line impact open rates.
• Yes, the message copy, layout and graphics impact click-thrus.
• Yes, landing page copy, layout and graphics impact conversion.

But in the end, if the subscriber doesn’t want or need your product or service right now, they are not going to click “Buy Now”. If the subscriber doesn’t see value in your offer, they are not going to fill out that form and click “Get More Information”.

Unless your name is Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell, your subscribers are not going to buy on the first announcement of your new book.

Email conversion depends more on the relationship you have with the subscriber than anything else. You have to cultivate that relationship every opportunity you can. You have to deliver on what you promise. You have to respect your subscribers has much as you want them to respect you. You have to become the “expert” in their eyes.

Once you do all that, conversion becomes a function of the offer and its’ presentation.

If you break that trust at any time though, you might as well remove that subscriber from your list (if they haven’t already). They will never care about your message or make a purchase again.

How good is your subscriber list? Do they trust you? Do you respect them?

Spend as much time developing, supporting and respecting your subscriber list as you do with landing page copy and image placement. The size of your subscriber list isn’t nearly as important as the qualiy of that subscriber list. It is better to have 500 subscribers that can’t wait until your next message than 15,000 subscribers who have your message filtered into their “To Read” folder in Outlook.

Remember, email conversion depends on your subscribers more than anything else. Keep that in mind with every message you send. If you’re not delivering valuable information that is timely and relevant to your subscribers, don’t click “Send”.

Do you monitor your web site traffic?

Do you monitor your conversions for promotions, sales pages, newsletter subscriptions, etc.?

Do you monitor your keyword placement in the search engines?

If your eyes have glazed over or you’re scratching your head, I’ll take that as a “no”.  That is the wrong answer on so many levels.

Getting quality web site traffic reports is easy AND free (Google Analytics).

Generating keyword placement reports is easy AND free (Rank Checker).

Tracking conversions is easy AND free (again, Google Analytics).

So, why aren’t you doing this?  Is you web site making you so much money you don’t care?  Are you getting new clients faster than you can update your CRM app?

If either of these apply to you, you can stop reading now.  For those of you who are left, please read on.

Looking at your traffic reports can tell you so many things. Here are just a few things you should look at:

• Unique Visitors: trending up, down or staying steady
• Time on Site: low numbers here are never a good thing
• Average Pageviews: again, low numbers are not a good thing
• Bounce Rate: high bounce rates indicate low engagement (if your site is just a blog, higher bounce rates are common and Average Pageviews will be lower)
• Referring Sites: indicates who your “friends” are
• Keywords: do they match your site content?
• Keyword Rankings: you better be number one for you company name.

Just looking at this data once a month can help you gain a better understanding of who uses your site, how they use your site and how effective and useful your site is to them.

So, start tracking your site traffic and you keyword rankings.  If you’re not doing this, how do you know if your site is supporting your business?  How do you know if all those changes and additions are actually working?

If your web site is an integral part of your business, please give it the attention it deserves.