Email marketing has been proven an effective online process and should be a mainstay in your digital marketing toolbox. Like a pot of brewed Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, you can mess it up if you don’t perform A/B Email Testing.
All of the hard work and time spent generating those valuable leads will go to waste if your email marketing campaign has no direction. A/B Email Testing will ensure your campaigns are targeted with laser precision and all resources are maximized.
What Are The Benefits Of Email Marketing?
What was the first thing you did this morning shortly after waking up and before the first cup of coffee?
If you’re like 58% of Americans, that would be to check your email.
Yes, more than half of people check their email first thing in the morning – even while they’re still in bed. It’s not social media, phone messages, or newsfeed.
And people don’t stop there. Chances are, you check your email multiple times every day.
This is what makes email marketing so effective. If your message successfully gets into the recipient’s inbox, there is a 21% chance that your email will be opened and read.
Email marketing has a very high Return on Investment (ROI). Studies have shown that for every US$1 spent on email marketing, you get a return of US$44 or 4,400%!
Of course, these are just statistics, not guarantees. You have to run your email marketing campaign correctly to be on the winning end of the statistics. And one of the best ways to ensure success is to conduct A/B Email testing.
What Is A/B Email Testing?
The simplest definition of A/B email testing is that it’s a process of testing different sections of your email to see which ones will best generate the desired results.
When it comes to an email, the smallest changes can lead to big results. From the subject line to the content itself, A/B email testing lets you know which version your audience will respond better to.
It’s worth your time to conduct A/B email testing to ensure that your efforts get the best returns.
As mentioned earlier, email marketing has a very high ROI. The rate of return on email marketing is much higher than Pay-Per-Click advertising, social media marketing, and various forms of traditional marketing.
What Are The 3 Benefits Of A/B Email Testing?
Even the most experienced digital marketers can’t get email marketing right every time. A/B email testing has benefits that will lower the risk of costly mistakes.
1. Fine-tune Your Email Marketing Strategy
They might overlook a component of the email because it seemed inconsequential. By the time the Digital Marketer is able to pinpoint the component, it may have already squandered selling opportunities with the email subscribers.
With A/B email testing, you can increase the chances of success of your email marketing campaign by comparing and contrasting different versions and pinpoint the areas that elicit the most favorable reactions from your audience.
2. Increase the Click-Through and Open Rates of Your Email
When you know what your subscribers like to see and read, you will be able to increase the open and click-through rates of your email.
The higher the open and click-through rates the higher the probability of your subscribers visiting your website and participating in your Calls-to-Action (CTA).
As you gain the confidence of your subscribers, it won’t be long before their interest in your products or services gets converted to sales.
3. Save More Money
Some marketers think that sending out an email blast is the best way to get results from an email campaign.
“Let’s weed out those who are interested or not by sending the same email to everyone. You can save more time and money.”
Mr. Shot Gun Marketer forgot to tell you the fundamental truth about the leads you worked hard to generate for your email campaign:
Everyone is different.
People react differently to content. By sending out the same email to everyone, you have failed to consider the individuality of your subscribers. They signed up for different reasons and motivations.
An email blast will not only lay waste to the leads you generated but it may do irreparable harm to your reputation. Before you know it, you will have more people unsubscribing to your email list.
What Components Of Your Email Should You Subject To A/B Testing?
Most people probably don’t give much thought about how they should structure or compose emails when they send them out to friends, family, and business associates.
This is because you have a personal relationship with the recipient of the email. At the very least, the person knows of you because of a chance encounter at a trade show or convention. Perhaps the recipient is a referral of a mutual friend.
With an email marketing campaign, you are sending out content to people you don’t know. You have no idea of who they are; what they like and how they respond to marketing copy.
A/B email testing acts as your guiding light so that you’re not blind when running the campaign.
You can get a clearer picture of who your audience is and what they like simply by testing different components of your email.
What components of your email should you subject to A/B testing?
- Subject Line – Find out how to phrase the title of your email, the length of the title, and the type of promotion you should run in the campaign. The right subject line is responsible for the high number of open rates.
- Time and Day – If your business caters to a global audience, run tests to identify the best times and days to send out your emails.
- Images – Studies have consistently shown that people respond faster and more favorably to images than text. Find out the types of images and other intricate details that encourage your subscribers to open your emails.
- Personalization – Do your subscribers react positively when you greet them by name? Other than that, find out how they want you to approach them. For example, some may prefer that your preheader states a solution to a problem they are experiencing.
- Calls-To-Action – Which CTA does your audience respond faster to: “Free – For First 50 Sign Ups ” or “Buy Now-Limited Stocks Only”? Your choice of CTA could determine how fast you can convert interested prospects into paying customers.
- Content – Many people sign up because they love your content. But as we said, each person is different. Some may prefer list-type articles while others might favor instructional content or “how to’s”. Find out who likes what and laser target your content to the right subscribers.
5 Smart Tips On How To Run A/B Email Testing
A/B Email testing is a conscientious process. You must be diligent, detail-oriented, and most of all, patient. As we said, even the most experienced Digital Marketers may not get it right the first time.
That said, we have included 5 smart tips on how to run your A/B email testing that can put you on the right track to email marketing success.
1. Identify Your Objective
What do you want to accomplish with the A/B email test? Usually, there are 3 areas digital marketers are focusing on when running an A/B email test:
- Number of Unsubscribers – Find out if there is a significant difference between the number of followers who unsubscribed from the A and B test groups.
- Click-through Rate – Find out which test group generated more clicks on your email.
- Open Rate – Find out which test group opened your email more frequently.
2. Formulate a Hypothesis
Once you’ve identified your objective, you can proceed to formulate a hypothesis by reviewing the components of your email and analyzing which one can deliver the expected results.
For example, your objective is to increase the open rate. You hypothesize that by coming up with a list-type subject line such as “10 Ways to Generate Wealth Now”, you will have more subscribers opening your email.
Don’t run tests on all the email components at the same time. Identify one component, run the A/B test, analyze the results, then move on to the next component.
3. Study the Most Frequently Sent Types of Emails First
For sure, your previous emails can be used as benchmarks for your hypothesis. Pull them out and study them carefully.
- How did you prepare the components?
- What was the structure of the emails?
- How long was your content?
- Which groups responded favorably?
- Which groups did not respond?
- Were there people who unsubscribed?
- How did you write the subject line?
- Did you use a preheader?
- Did you greet the recipients by their first names?
You can get valuable information from your most frequently sent emails. Use the details as benchmarks for your current A/B email testing.
4. Divide Your Email Marketing List Into A and B Segments
Start out with a small portion of your email marketing list. Divide them into A and B segments.
There are many good email marketing software that you can use to help you segment your email marketing list.
Here are a few segments that you might want to consider for your own email marketing list:
- New Subscribers
- Tastes and Preferences
- Interests
- Geography or Location
- Level of Activity
- Amount of Purchase
- Frequency of Purchase
How you segment your email marketing list will depend on what your objective is.
In our example, you want to increase the open rate. Given this objective, you can create a segment of those who engage with your emails more frequently and those who hardly engage with your emails.
5. Track and Analyze the Results of Your A/B Email Tests
Stay on top of the results. Collect and organize the data from the A/B tests. Analyze them thoroughly. Run more tests if needed and if you wish, change some of the conditions of the test.
Once you’re confident with the results of your A/B email test, you can expand it to a larger population from your list.
You may experience variances from the results because of the larger test group. But that’s okay. It will help you fine-tune your process and come up with more effective email campaigns.
Conclusion
According to Statista, the number of email users will grow from 3.9 billion in 2019 to 4.48 billion in 2024. Compare that to social media which has 3 billion active users in 2019.
Social media may come and go but people will always use email.
A properly managed and tightly-focused email marketing campaign will surely generate wonderful results for your business’ digital marketing strategy. Performing an A/B test before you email marketing content to your subscribers will not only help you achieve your goals but it will keep your audience engaged.
If you’ve decided to run an email marketing campaign, give us a call and we’ll set up an effective one for you!
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