In marketing, conversion means the transition of a person from an initial state to a target state, e.g. from prospect to buyer. Conversion takes place "when the recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action" (quoted from the MarketingSherpa Glossary).
In the course of marketing campaigns, marketing messages are sent to targeted or broad recipients, e.g. in the form of emails, advertisements, or posts on social media. These messages contain a call to action, e.g. to follow a link, sign up for an email list, or buy a product.
Conversion occurs each time message recipients respond in the desired way by reading the marketing message and/or following the call to action. For example, by
- opening your email
- following the link to your registration page that is in this email
- registering with their email address to read your content
- buying your products
The total rate of all customers who have gone through conversion is called the "conversion rate". A high conversion rate is the goal of any online marketing effort, so you should constantly work to optimize your conversion rate.
Methods to optimize the conversion rate are referred to as "conversion rate optimization" (CRO). A well-known method for this is split testing (also called A/B testing).
In order to keep track of your conversion rate and optimize it, Digistore24 offers some metrics and tools that you can find in dashboards and the Conversion Cockpit.