Testing your email is an integral part of improving your campaigns and keeping up with consumer trends. As a company, it’s important to invest time and energy into determining the marketing strategies and ideas that most appeal to your audience, to engage and create your desired action.
Using A/B testing can help email marketers uncover vital information about the building blocks of your email campaign, such as subject lines, email design, landing pages, copy, and more. To do this, you must present two different versions to two different groups and analyze the reactions. These engagements and metrics can inform how you construct future campaigns for greater success.
The ResponseGenius testing software makes employing A/B split testing easy to execute. However, we as marketers can over-complicate the simplest of things, including testing, which can undermine your results in the long run.
Here are some of the best practices to ensure you’re getting the most out of your A/B testing:
Test the Most Important Campaign Elements First
When you’re seeking the most powerful results, always begin A/B testing with key campaign elements like subject lines, calls-to-action, headlines, and images. There will be time to test the minor stuff, but always focus first on the essentials that move the needle most.
Limit Your A/B Tests to One Thing at a Time
Having multiple disparities between A and B versions make it difficult to pinpoint which element influenced the performance. The cardinal rule of testing is one change at a time, such as a percent-off discount vs. dollars-off discount, or Ariel font vs. Calibri font.
Determine a Clear Hypothesis Before You Begin Testing
To be strategic in your testing requires settling on a hypothesis before you begin. Whether you’re trying to boost sales or increase conversions, write down the goal you’d like to accomplish and select elements to test based on said goal.
Both Test Groups Should Be of a Similar Audience
It’s never perfect but strive to A/B test with similar groups of subscribers. Target a group – whether it’s repeat customers, new subscribers, or subscribers of a similar demographic – and split up the list into two groups. If your groups are too disparate, your results will be less effective.
Continue Testing Your Results
Though A/B testing is highly effective, no single test is conclusive forever. Over time, the attitudes, behaviors, and interests of your subscribers will naturally change. The composition of your email should always move forward with those changes, so it’s essential to periodically reconfirm every test you complete. When the initial results lose their effectiveness, it’s time to start from scratch and begin a new round of testing.
A/B testing requires patience, detail, and organization, but the results provide quantifiable and statistical insights about what your customer base and online audience finds valuable.
Let ResponseGenius help take your email marketing to the next level – hello@responsegenius.com
