1. What to test
Approach testing with the view to discovering what works best for your own database of customers and prospects by considering the following:
Time and day: Two key things you should test right away are the best day and time to send to your database. By testing days and times you will find out what your readers respond best to, which can give you an immediate uplift in your open, click and conversion rates.
Sender field: This is of upmost importance to get right. People scan their inboxes and make decisions as to whether they’ll delete or open based on 1) the sender and then 2) the subject line. In general you want to establish a good sender email address to use and stick with that, as people may be white listing you based on it. Do ongoing tests of the sender field, as it can have an enormous impact on your open rate. Your company should decide whether an email comes from your brand, your company, or the name of an individual.
Subject line: This is a prime piece of real estate! After establishing that the recipient recognises the sender, 40 to 60 per cent of subscribers will then decide for sure if they’ll open an email based on the subject line. You should keep the word count to no more than 50 characters.
Test the wording of the subject line. Try comparing a 20 per cent off offer versus a discount of a set amount, a personalised subject line versus a generic one, single topic versus multi-topic mentions, or adding in time or day deadlines as to when an offer ends. Regarding the personalised subject line, this could include factoring in the first name of a recipient. You’ll also be testing to ensure the subject line isn’t pushing your email into the junk folder.
Design: Test all aspects of you design including the layout, look, style, fonts and even colours to see if they could perform better. If over several issues you find that articles and topics in the mailings are not performing well, test the location in the layout or try writing a different style of synopsis for the article.
Copy length: This is an interesting area to test. Though brevity is important in this day and age of scanning the inbox, studies are finding that long copy can indeed perform as well as short copy. You may get fewer clicks but a higher conversion rate (i.e. attract more intensely interested recipients as opposed to just generally interested ones).
Call to action: The call to action is the ‘pay off’ for your email and should be carefully thought out. Test the wording, the offer and the contact method. Test that the call to action is prominent enough by showing the email to someone who has not seen it before and asking them to find the action points on a page. They should be able to locate them within three seconds.
2. How to test
No matter what size your list, you can still get results from a small test group. It’s better to test now rather than wait until you have a big database to split out a segment.
There are two common types of testing:
The A/B split test: Split your list in two. What you send and when you send should be identical for both lists – except for the test criteria. Tracking the results of both will provide insight for your next send.
The random test: Test a segment of your list, and based on the results send the most successful performing test to the remaining addresses on your list.
3. Metrics Matter
You’ll use the resulting metrics from testing to make a decision on what to send to the main list. Metrics that result from the testing and the actual send are both of ongoing value to you. There are three general types of metrics that should matter to email marketers:
Send metrics: These focus on the details involved in sending the email. They include the number of emails sent, the number of permanently bounced emails and the number of emails assumed delivered.
Performance metrics: These let you evaluate how well campaigns are performing. They include the open rate, click-throughs, unsubscribes and forward rates.
Conversion metrics: These give you insight in to how email recipients took action or completed the desired action. They include the abandon and click-to-purchase ratios, as well as conversion rates.
4. What to do with the results
Doing sends based on the pre-testing you’ve done is important. By tracking and creating your own benchmarks, you’ll be able to gain insight into content popularity, conversion rates and also performance trends over several issues. You’ll also be able to spot trends which highlight where you can further improve a specific result or desired action through testing.
To derive the full benefits of email marketing, you should view it as an ongoing process: testing, sending, analysing your results, making changes and then repeating the whole cycle again.
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