You’ve spent all that time planning customer segments and creating targeted content for them – so it makes sense to test, to ensure you’re hitting the mark. And the best way to do that is with an A/B test. An A/B split test basically compares two versions of one email campaign where some elements can be different so you can test which is the most effective, and find out what works and what doesn’t for your audience.
Select some key elements and segment groups and A/B testing will give you immediate and clear feedback on how well you’re matching content to subscriber segments. Some of the most crucial attributes you can test are:
- Subject lines: Test everything from your choice of words, to the tone of the language, use humour or be serious, test symbols vs. no symbols, etc.
- From name: A company name may work better than an individual’s name, or vice versa.
- Feature article:
- Offer or Promotion: Test whether having an offer in your email boosts open rates or clickthroughs, and see if your audience respond to discounts or promotions - it may not suit everyone. Keep in mind the experts recommend that you use an incentive only after the 3rd re-engagement or cart abandonment email, so don’t offer things too easily – however when used appropriately they can be effective.
- Send time: Yes there are the well known and much favoured ‘best days to send’ and ‘best times to send’ however it may not necessarily be relevant for your campaign or your audience, so test both these factors.
- Calls to action: The size, colour, placement, and design of the call to action can all have an impact on the effectiveness of your CTA. Too small and people won’t see it…. to bright and colourful and it may look like spam to your readers. The wrong words and it may not appeal to your subscribers. This is an element that can be done in so many ways it pays to test all possible variations.
- Landing pages: Landing pages are perfect for hosting additional content, which means your email can stay nice and brief. Test whether linking to landing pages that hold extra content works for your campaign.
- Email length: Some companies opt for short emails, some longer. Again it depends on your communication, the audience, etc. as to what is most appropriate.
With A/B testing you can test two different subject lines (Or test using any of the other elements mentioned above) and then send that to two test groups and then deploy the campaign with the most successful subject line (or whichever element you used that performed better and this will help maximise your open rates and clickthroughs and you also learn what works with your subscribers for future campaigns.
The A/B testing tool in SmartMail Pro is designed to be managed entirely independently by you. Read more on this here.