Not only is email a cost effective tool that has enabled marketers to cater creatively with a personalised tone of voice like no other medium, but it also allows us to see clearly what works and what doesn’t. This is all done through testing; testing everything from the data to the creative in order to ensure a marketing campaign is productive.
Here are some key tips to bear in mind when evaluating your email approach:
1. Test your data
Firstly, make sure you know your data is from a reliable, compliant and accurate source and that the lists are relevant for your target audience. It’s important to know the data verification for the last refresh/clean of your data in order to get the best possible results.
In order to do this, it’s best to source a variety of lists from specialist list suppliers and compare them to ensure you are using the best data for your purposes. 2. Test the layout
As a marketer, it’s important to know that your email can be opened in a HTML browser without any problems. If not, time and money spent developing engaging creative will be wasted.
Make sure you test a full variety of email clients (eg. Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook) and ensure the layout is correct and easy to open in all of them. You don’t want your customer losing attention because the email crashes or takes too long to upload.
2. Test the layout
As a marketer, it’s important to know that your email can be opened in an HTML browser without any problems. If not, time and money spent developing engaging creative will be wasted. Make sure you test a full variety of email clients (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook) and ensure the layout is correct and easy to open in all of them. You don’t want your customer losing attention because the email crashes or takes too long to upload.
3. Test the subject line
Test the subject line – what encourages a consumer to open an email? How can you interact with your key audience?
It’s a case of test, test and test again; recording how many emails were opened with different subject names is imperative to future campaign successes.
You can search through your ISP addresses to learn which keywords worked and which didn’t. Also think about subject length, does it make a difference? It probably does, depending on your audience, so think carefully about what it is, what it says about your brand and if it makes your customers feel secure about opening it.
4. Test the length of your email
Just because you think your brand is interesting, it doesn’t mean you should bombard your customers with tonnes of information.
The length of email is dependant on different audiences, so think about your targets. If you’re offering a service – rather than a promotional offer – then you might need more text. Think about when your customer might open this email. Do they have time to read all the copy?
5. Test times
Think logically and test for the best times to send your emails. If you want to interact with someone at work it’s probably best to get their attention first thing in the morning or after lunch when they might be making lighter business decisions.
However, if you are communicating to an individual through a personal email address, then you probably want to ensure that they get the email in their lunch break or after work – when people have more time to linger over their emails. It may sound obvious, but there are many rogue marketers out there that pay no attention to this rule and cause general annoyance. This can result in low response rates so it’s in everyone’s interest to prevent this.
6. Size of your test
Think about the results you want to achieve and then test segments accordingly. Consider the size of your test and decide whether it’s important to split your list up, to test lists against each other or to do a pre-test with a handful of samples.
7. Who is it from?
What happens when your customers click on ‘reply’? It’s crucial to test your email to ensure it is not too generic and doesn’t trigger the spam filters when your customers press reply. Test to see which email addresses work and which don’t. You need to watch out for blacklisting and ISP blocking – not only is this crucial to ensure your email marketing campaign can work, but also imperative to keep your brand reputation intact.
8. Test the creative
Email provides the opportunity to get your brand message across and make your brand appeal to the recipient. It’s so important to test colour, font, size, degree of personalisation and wording, tone of voice – anything in the email to see what recipients respond to and like.
As technology improves so will the email content, allowing customers to interact and play with your brand. Customers like visual audio, graphics and anything interactive, therefore it’s important to be up to scratch with interesting creative work.
Email marketing has given us access to a world of insight. Still, many companies have yet to take full advantage of the benefits this can deliver in improving the relevance of their communication. They are therefore missing out on a cost-effective opportunity to significantly improve response and overall ROI.
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