Are you looking to boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Well-planned A/B testing can go a long way in determining what’s working and what’s not to ensure your campaigns are more profitable and successful.
In email marketing, A/B testing compares two versions of an email against each other, with one being the control and the other being a test. Using basic steps, you can prepare and execute this efficient assessment to create your best campaign yet.
First, you’ll want to make a list of all the variables you want to test. In many cases, email marketers will want to analyze the effectiveness of subject lines, pre-header text, and names – all aspects that a reader will see first in their inbox.
Before you begin testing, make sure you are familiar with your baseline (or your current results). It’s crucial to establish your control email before beginning to manipulate individual factors.
In most email marketing A/B testing, testers will target a smaller portion of the list OR test within a certain time frame. It’s important to devote ample time to your test, to ensure you get a proper read on your results. If you’re testing to a portion of your list, ensure your segmented portion encapsulates a wide demographic of your subscribers (without being deliberately picky). However, if you’re looking to see how a specific demographic reacts to a campaign, extract those subscribers and only test on a portion of those users.
The most important rule of A/B testing is to only test one variable at a time. If you’re testing your subject line, refrain from changing the sender name. You must avoid skewing the data for either of the variables. Once the first test is over, you can then move onto the next email variable you want to test. After you’ve gathered all of your results, use the analytics to improve your campaign.
No email marketing campaign is ever perfect, but most can be improved. Using simple A/B testing (and some patience), email marketers have access to real time user behavior that can elevate a good campaign to great.
ResponseGenius has an outstanding A/B testing tool built into the solution. You can create up to 5 splits (A-E) in an individual campaign. Winning splits can be judged on different delivery times, number of clicks, opens or conversions. After a set time period of your choice, the most effective version (Winning Split) of the content is automatically sent to the remaining recipients. Contact us to learn more about strategies we recommend for your best testing.
Let ResponseGenius help take your email marketing to the next level – hello@responsegenius.com
