Are you A/B testing for the best email results? If not, you should be! And here’s how….
But first, what is A/B testing?
A/B testing involves creating two versions of an email with the same goal that are different from each other in one way to see which variant performs best:
Why conduct testing and optimisation?
Put simply, for better results in the long term. When Hubspot ran A/B testing based on personalised sender names they found the version of the email that had a person’s name as the sender had a 0.53% higher open rate and a 0.23% higher click-through rate. While the percentage improvement is relatively low, this equated to 131 leads being gained on this test alone – so you can see that by
Some low hanging fruits which are easy to A/B test include:
• Subject
• Sender name
• Tone of voice
• Call to action – wording, placement, colour, button, or text link
• Day/Time of Day
• Length
• Preheader Text
• Plain text vs HTML
And these are likely to be more time-intensive, but other variables you might want to test include:
• Personalisation
• Lead topic / product / offer
• Email Design
• Images
How do I go about email A/B testing?
There are a few golden rules here:
1. Set goals
Know what you are focused on for this particular email before you test – are you looking to improve your email open rates, click-through rates, or increase conversion rates?
2. Split your list randomly
Make sure one group isn’t skewed by their propensity to take action otherwise the test results will be subjective
3. Prioritise and run one at a time
Make sure you are testing one thing from the list above each time; change too many variables and you won’t know what it was that had the positive impact.
4. Include the learnings from the previous test into the next
Once you know the winner from test one e.g. which header image worked better, use the winning formula on both of the next email versions. That way you will end up with the total winning combination of all of the variables when you are done!
Still not sure, or need some advice? Book in with me for a free consultation.
