Catch the E-mail Testing Bug!
A three-step approach to help you move beyond the subject line.
October 2006 By Morgan Stewart
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Recently, I received the following note from a marketer: “Testing does matter. I just looked at the results from my first A/B split test, and the subject line I made up had a 40 percent higher clickthrough rate than the one written by our communications department.” Through testing, she had hit on a winning tactic.
Beyond Subject Line Testing
Most e-mail marketers catch the testing bug when they see results from a subject line test—a fast and simple test to implement. This is the first step on the path to a broad range of factors you can test to improve the effectiveness of your e-mail programs.
In e-mail marketing, you have the ability to track each step of your customers’ engagement with your messages, which in turn provides incredible insights and opportunities for improvement. You can detect if customers opened an e-mail, as well as what they did once the messages were opened. For example, did they click on a link or multiple links, and which ones? Did they complete a survey or forward the e-mail to someone else? Once your e-mail tracking is integrated with Web analytics tools, you gain insight into post-click activity and conversion data. Do the links in your e-mail direct people to the correct landing pages? Do they act on the call-to-action on your landing page, or do they search for something else? Ultimately, do they do something that impacts your bottom line, like making a purchase, calling a sales rep or registering for an event? Each of these pieces of information provides you with opportunities to provide better service to customers and impact your bottom line through testing and optimization.
To start the testing process, use the following three-step approach, which will help you identify what to test within your e-mail campaigns and the appropriate means of conducting the tests.
1. Identify your greatest opportunities to improve your e-mail program.
You’ll want to prioritize the points of the e-mail marketing program that need to be optimized by evaluating the e-mail response funnel (e.g., delivered, opens, clicks, product views, sales). The e-mail response funnel is the same for all organizations up to the click stage. At that point, the response funnel should reflect the objectives of your site. While the objective may be sales, it could just as well be registration for an event, driving a phone call, printing a coupon or downloading a whitepaper. To evaluate your e-mail response funnel, compile your e-mail campaigns’ historical averages of delivery, open, clickthrough and conversion rates, and compare those to a good set of benchmarks (e.g., by considering industry and list size). This will help you identify and prioritize areas that need optimization.
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