A/B Testing for Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketers are some of the most flexible and adaptable individuals on the planet. If you run email campaigns yourself, then you already know why those traits are key to becoming a successful marketer: you will generally have to be that way because you will be dealing with a wide variety of people in your line of business.
Most of your income will come from commissions generated by leads and sales. This is why it’s so important to be able to communicate well with your audience. Aside from the actual content in your emails, the layout and formatting of your email copies matter just as much. You have to keep in mind that when the recipient opens the email, the first things they see will be your headings and images. If they don’t like what they perceive in that split second, then they will most likely delete the email and ignore the rest of the content that you’ve prepared.
Finding the Perfect Email Copy Formula
It might take a while, but with time, you’ll be able to come up with a formula to writing email copies that enjoy a high degree of success. A method that you can help you along in this process is A/B testing.
A/B testing, which is also called split or bucket testing, is a test method where a control email copy is compared to a variety of single-variable sample emails. The version that provides your desired results is deemed as the better version.
Another test option is multivariate testing. This is similar to A/B testing in the sense that different versions of the same email copy will be sent out to your email list for comparison. However, you can modify any number of elements you want to in this method. Email copies generally contain fewer elements than websites, so A/B testing methods should suffice.
Benefits of A/B Testing
By doing A/B tests in your emails, you’ll be able to figure out which elements will work to your advantage and which will not. You could think of it as a dynamic way of doing surveys, where you can get most of the people in your email list to respond.
A/B tests help you optimize your email copies so you can make more sales and increase your conversions. The process is basically a more orderly way of doing trial and error runs, since you actually have a system in place for running your tests.
Source: http://designmilitia.co.uk/split-a-b-testing.html
How to Conduct an A/B Test
First of all, do a general assessment of the previous emails that you’ve sent out to your list. You can take a look at the last five messages you sent out or bring up five emails that got the highest number of clicks or conversions. Note down what elements they have in common and what components can still be improved, and rank them according to priority in your list.
Choose one element to test out and create two variations of it to use in your test. Prepare the email copies in your email manager, and tweak settings to ensure that different groups of your subscribers will receive a different version of the email.
Once the emails are sent out, wait for the test to run its course and evaluate the results. Do this by bringing up the metrics in your email manager. Determine which variation of the element you tested is better by comparing which one of the two brought in better results, and then implement that for your future emails.
At this point, go can back to the list you created earlier on and run more tests to optimize your emails further.
Ruben Corbo is a freelance writer that writes about technology, gaming, music, and online marketing especially topics about A/B testing and how to run multivariate tests. To learn more about about these great web traffic conversion tools, go to http://www.maxymiser.com.Ruben is also an avid gamer and music composer for short films and other visual arts.
