Email Marketing: Plan A/B Testing In Your Next Email Campaign
Email marketing is fundamental to a successful online business. A fantastic way to make sure that your communication is on point is to plan A/B testing in your next email campaign.
Why Plan An A/B Test
Are you happy with your open rates? Or maybe your click-thru rates have dropped. This is a type of test an online business needs to perform to increase engagement with email marketing.
What is A/B Testing
A/B testing or you may also hear it referred to as split testing is communicating a little something different to your email list. This doesn’t mean that you rewrite the whole email.
It simply means that you change one element of the email and figure out which one performed better with your email list.
To Test Or Not To Test
The answer is to test, don’t shy away from this because you think it may be hard. Most Email Service Provider makes this a simple process.
When planning A/B testing in your next campaign choose only one area to test. If you pick two you’ll not know what was the item produces the increase in performance.
What’s The Goal?
Do you want to improve open rates?
Do you want to improve click-thru rates to your website or offer?
Have a goal in mind that you want to test in your next email campaign and know why you want to A/B Test.
Ideas List Of Tests
Here is an ideas list for A/B testing in your next campaign, pick the one that feels easy to you.
- Subject Lines – Ask A Question in your subject line. → Or use symbols or numbers to grab attention.
- Pre-Header Text – To use or not to use can be the test. Test two different topics in the preheader text.
- Call To Action – Does a call to action that is a hyperlink or call to action with a button perform better.
- Content – Long form content a very long email or short form that it just a bit with the option to read more on your website
- Image or No Image – if you have images or no images which gets the attention of the reader.
- Offer – Test two different offers in your email campaign
Keep Track
After you send out your campaign keep track of the results. This can be done on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet. Since your A/B Testing in your email campaign
The items that you’ll want to track and compare are:
- Open Rates – how many subscribers opened the email. This will be a direct reflection of your subject line and pre-header text.
- Total Clicks – What is the total number of clicks you received during your campaign. Did one email outrank the other?
- Clicks per Link – If you were testing a call to action this will be a metric to watch.
- Unsubscribers – did one email receive a higher unsubscribe number?
- Conversation Rate – This would be a great metric for the success of your offers or your call to action.
- Forward Rate – Sharing is caring! Did one of the emails receive more forwards? This is when the user shares your email with a friend.
- A/B Testing is not a one and done. Do it again until your messaging is a fine-tuned communication machine.
Quick Wrap Up
Why Plan A/B Testing In Your Next Email Campaign – testing will help you figure out what performs better with your unique subscriber list.
What is A/B Testing – when you compare two emails with the same variable changed in each of the emails? This will also be referred to as split testing.
What’s The Goal – every email marketing campaign needs to be sent with a goal in mind
Ideas List of Tests – a quick list of ideas to get started on A/B testing in your next email campaign.
Keep Track – items that you’ll want to track and measure to determine success.
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