While conversion rates differ among businesses and industries, the global average website conversion rate is 3.68%.
It suggests that for every 100 people who visit a site, around 96 leave without taking action.
Indeed, it’s highly challenging to turn visitors into customers.
Having over 20 years of experience creating innovative digital marketing strategies that help businesses thrive, Jonathan Herrick joins us to discuss proven email marketing strategies that can help you re-engage your website visitors who failed to convert.
Who Is Jonathan Herrick?
Jonathan is the CEO and chief high-fiver at Benchmark Email, BenchmarkONE, and Contacts+. With a passion for building high-performing teams and growing SaaS businesses, he leads 150 employees while serving over 1 million users in 15 countries. Jonathan’s previous experience includes vice president roles at Atango and Sendouts.
Almost 40% of businesses are planning to increase their email budget, as per Hubspot research.
Even when they can allocate more resources to email marketing, they face various challenges that prevent campaign success.
Jonathan says he’s seen a few factors at play, but deliverability is the biggest one that hinders email campaigns from reaching their full potential.
“Spam filters are getting more stringent and intelligent over time, making it harder for brands to make it into the inbox unless they follow particular protocols.
If emails appear suspicious or use specific formatting and wording, they’ll be flagged as spam instead of reaching the inbox,” he adds.
He believes factors like poor sender reputation, misleading subject lines, or overly promotional content can trigger spam filters.
“It’s also crucial that brands send emails to high-quality email lists. Sending emails to outdated or poorly maintained lists can lead to high bounce rates and low deliverability, negatively affecting the sender's reputation,” he explains.
Additionally, he says that audience fatigue should also be addressed.
“Just look at our own inboxes — they are constantly flooded with marketing emails. Certainly, it’s even more difficult for individual campaigns to stand out and capture attention.
If subscribers feel overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive from a brand, they may become disengaged or unsubscribe,” he says.
This is why ensuring your emails are effectively personalized, well-designed, and timed is crucial for success.
How Email Outperforms Social Media for Businesses
Jonathan shares four key reasons that show what makes email marketing indispensable compared to social media marketing:
- Personalization: Emails can be tailored to individual preferences, behaviors, and purchase history, leading to more meaningful interactions. Social media, while interactive, needs a different level of direct personalization.
- Ownership: You own your contact list and direct access to your subscribers without relying on algorithms or third-party platforms. The platform's algorithms on social media control your content's reach and visibility, which can change without notice.
- Longevity: Email content remains in a recipient’s inbox until they delete it, giving your message a longer lifespan. Social media posts, however, can quickly get buried in a user’s feed, reducing their visibility and impact over time.
- Conversions: When driving website leads and conversions, emails often result in higher conversion rates than social media posts. Email subscribers have already shown interest in your brand by opting in, making them more likely to engage with your content, offers, or calls to action.
With all these benefits, it's no wonder that 80% of marketers once shared that they would rather give up social media than email – proving just how crucial email is for building lasting relationships and driving results.
Considering these aspects, email marketing gives businesses a unique edge, offering more control and stronger results than social media ever could.
Key Elements of a High-Performing Email Marketing Campaign
Jonathan and I discussed what it takes to produce an effective email marketing campaign that engages customers and drives conversions.
He highlights three key factors:
- Personalization: The same factor that makes email more indispensable than social media also makes it a high-performing one. Personalized emails that address the recipient by name or offer content based on their preferences, past behavior, or purchase history are more likely to resonate. They offer a personal touch that fosters a stronger connection between the brand and the customer.
- Segmentation: By segmenting your email list based on demographics, behavior, interests, or purchases, you can send relevant content to each segment, which leads to higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
- Automation: Sending emails manually requires a lot of time and is tedious. Email automation allows for automatic sequences setup based on triggers (like first signing up for your email marketing or completing a purchase), ensuring the right message reaches the right person at the right time.
Jonathan explains that email marketing in 2025 will be about taking things a step further to see real impact like using AI and machine learning.
He also recommends getting creative by incorporating interactive elements like polls, quizzes, or gamified elements into an email marketing campaign to make it more engaging and exciting.
Best Practices for Personalizing an Email Marketing Campaign
A HubSpot study reveals that 94% of marketers say that personalization helps increase sales, while 96% of them claim that it helps increase the likelihood of buyers becoming repeat customers.
But how can businesses personalize email content to enhance user engagement and website visits successfully?
According to Jonathan, personalizing email content is mostly about following a process.
“Gathering data such as demographics, purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement levels is crucial. You can then use this information to create tailored content that speaks directly to each subscriber’s interests and needs.
To gather this information, you’ll need to implement opt-in forms on your website.
These forms should be on landing pages, lead magnets, and other areas of your website, and they should encourage people to download content or offers or sign up for your email newsletter,” he says.
He adds that customer relationship management (CRM) will also be crucial in obtaining this information and help keep track of website visitors, customers, and leads.
“[This will help] you can tap into their behaviors and actions, such as browsing a specific product category, abandoning a cart, or downloading a resource. You can then use this information to inform your email outreach accordingly,” he adds.
Watch our video to learn what are triggered emails and how your business can benefit from using them:
Re-engaging Non-Converting Website Users
Re-engaging non-converting website visitors is a key part of every email marketing strategy.
Jonathan shares re-engagement tactics that businesses can use to convert website visitors:
- Reclaim lost sales with timely reminders: Automate follow-ups to bring back customers who abandoned carts. A simple reminder can turn missed opportunities into revenue.
- Use smart incentives to close deals: Strategic discounts or free shipping can nudge hesitant customers to buy, boosting conversion without slashing profits.
- Focus on personalization that drives repeat business: Leverage customer data to recommend products. Tailored experiences turn one-time buyers into loyal customers.
- Engage customers with relevant content: Keep customers hooked by sending content based on their behavior. When you stay at the top of your mind, they keep coming back.
- Supercharge recommendations with AI: AI-powered recommendations drive smarter product suggestions, boosting sales and enhancing the customer journey.
- Build trust with social proof: Highlight customer reviews and testimonials. social proof is a powerful driver of trust and conversions.
- Leverage user-generated content for authenticity: Showcase customer photos or videos to build credibility and inspire others to act.
- Get critical insights from customer feedback: Use surveys to understand why customers aren’t completing purchases. These insights can lead to stronger strategies.
- Drive action with expiring offers: Create urgency with time-limited deals that push customers to act before they miss out.
To make your website visitors take the desired steps, you must optimize your site for conversions.
However, taking strategies outside your website can also help achieve your goals.
Jonathan’s proven email marketing tactics can make a huge difference in how you re-engage your audience and increase the chances for business success.
