Hello Readers!
Email marketing is the essence of any business success that helps to add new clients to the bucket.
As it’s our first obligation to educate our readers about the latest techniques to build their marketing strategies, we have decided to provide a free email marketing course that has all the basic elements you need to create a successful email marketing strategy.
During our free online email marketing course, we have shared the following:
Chapter 1- How to get started with email marketing?
Chapter 2- How to create the email marketing list from scratch?
Chapter 3- How to create a free email template without coding?
Chapter 4 – How to measure the effectiveness of your email campaign?
Here is the 5th chapter of our Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing, that contains how to use A/B tests to improve your email campaigns?
In this chapter, you will be learning the basics of A/B testing such as:
- What is A/B testing?
- How do A/B Testing Campaigns Work?
- What are the benefits of A/B Email testing?
- How to change or decide A/b testing email subject lines?
- A/b testing email best practices with email A/B testing examples
- When is important to use A/B testing for your email campaign?
Here We Go!
Email campaigns and newsletters are an extraordinary but effective method to retreat your business that adds more clients accordingly.
There are times when you have tried everything in your email marketing strategy but are still not able to decide whether the outcome is sufficient or not.
Being an email marketer, it becomes very important to understand what is required to make your email marketing a success.
For example, you are working on an email marketing campaign where you have shared an ‘n’ number of emails to your subscribers i.e your database. Some of your subscribers have opened it and others may not.
In such a scenario, you need to understand what considerable measures or actions you have taken in the email campaign that has officially worked for you.
And, what’s more, you can add to improvise the open rate as well as the conversion rate of your email campaigns.
For some, you need to apply the A/B testing theory that helps to experiment to create new effective marketing strategies.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing, which is also called Split Testing in marketing language, is a method that helps you to test human reactions to your marketing campaign. It’s a hypothesis about human behavior or reaction to your efforts.
The test can be based on many forms like testing the subject lines, formats, designs, content, call to action, etc, of your email marketing campaigns. In an A/B test, people are split at random into two groups.
How do A/B Testing Campaigns Work?
During the test, two identical campaigns are presented among the two groups with minor changes such as color, designs, graphics, call to action, etc. with the same agenda to target the audience.
The original template is known as the Control and the other is Variation (what are you actually testing with changes).
After creating templates, you compare the performance of the variation against the performance of the control.
The performance is generally calculated in the form of open rate, click rate, conversion rate, engagement, etc.
If the variation is more successful than your original template (the control), you get an idea of what works for your marketing strategy. Therefore you can replace the old control with the new variation and use it for further tests as well.
If the variation does not perform better than the control, then stick with what you have and try a new test to improve your results from the control.
What are the benefits of A/B testing your email campaign?
An A/B test has two main benefits:
- It gives you data to back up what you think might be successful.
- It’s probably the cheapest way you can improve your sales or conversions.
- A/B testing can be used on almost anything you can think of: your design, email copy (in the body or subject), calls to action, etc.
A/B Testing Email Ideas To Improve Your Open Rates
The subscriber’s open emails based on many reasons, like subject line, preview text appeal (especially on mobiles), sender, etc. You can A/B test variations of each to find what works best with your recipients.
Idea 1: Send Your Email Campaigns At Different Times or Days
To discover what works best with your prospect’s schedule, consider A/B testing:
Day of the week: While exploring email campaigns by sending emails to thousands of subscribers, the study has found that messages sent during the weekend have higher open rates than on weekdays.
Time of day: Time plays a very important role in open rates. Constant Contact (one of the most commonly used email marketing tools) has released a report stating email marketing trends that recognize the day and time have more control over open rates.
Idea 2: Use of Personalized Statements or Questions In Your Subject Line
One of the benefits of A/B testing is that you can try various ways to examine the potential of your email marketing campaign. Like you can use “hey” in your subject line or start with Subscriber’s Name.
This is your playground, try new ways and analyze the performance. You can try A/B testing email questions within your own messaging.
Idea 3: Change The First Line Of Your Email
The first sentence of your message often appears as a snippet of preview text in your recipient’s inbox. Getting this right message through the snippet can increase your open rates by up to 45%.
That’s roughly 40 to 90 characters to experiment with, depending on the email app or tool.
Idea 4: Use of Long vs Short Subject Lines in Your Email Campaign
Marketers have always suggested using fewer characters in the subject lines of your email marketing campaign. Short and precise is always in.
Because, if we compare it with mobiles;
- iPhone only shows 35-38 characters in portrait mode (compared to 80 in landscape).
- And the Galaxy S4 constricts subject lines even further, showing only 33 characters in portrait mode.
Therefore, there is no use in having typically more characters in your subject lines.
If your subject line is typically over 50 characters, then this is a good reason that you should go for an A/B test on your subject line.
Ideally one should aim for less than five words.
Idea 5: Capitalize All, One, Or None Of The Words (Letters) In Your Subject Line
Strikingly, the email marketing tool MailChimp has realized during the testing that an altogether capitalized form of title bring out about somewhat higher than normal open rates.
The split test Campaign by MailChimp discovered what works best; is to send a title case headline to Campaign A and a lowercase one to Campaign B.
You will be able to analyze performance better.
Idea 6: Personalize the Subject Line
Attempt A/B testing a similar email body with two distinctive titles one non-specific, the other with a custom field that personalizes your message to the recipient.
A few examples to test:
Include and preclude “you.” → How you can win in 2016 / How to win in 2016
Incorporate your Recipient’s first name → Quick inquiry, {!First Name}/Quick question(Here are the means by which to customize up to 200 messages immediately with custom fields)
Say your prospect’s part/occupation → Sales representatives love this / People love this
Utilize their organization → {!My company} + {!Your company} = {benefit}/{!My company} = {benefit}
Pro tip: If you’re sending a Campaign, ensure you have a placeholder for any contacts whose data you may miss (ex: you don’t have a first name for somebody’s email address).
Idea 7: Subject lines with high Emotional value or showing empathy
Emotions drive actions. In any case, did you realize that you can really quantify the level of passionate as well as emotional effect your headline has?
This calculation is known as Emotional Marketing Value (EMV). It’s utilized to evaluate how a cluster of words (like a headline) may inspire an emotional reaction from a reader by speaking to one’s judgment, empathy, or otherworldliness.
Idea 8: Longer vs Shorter Emails
Can your messages be grabbed in 8 seconds by the readers? If not, you may lose the consideration of your readers.
Take a simple format to convey your message and add a short but crisp message to it. Your readers’ time is very precious. Utilize in a smart way.
Idea 9: Keep Changing your Call To Action (CTA)
This is the piece of your email where you request your reader’s action. The ultimate purpose behind CTAs could be anything like, directing to the website, downloading the brochure, clicking to comments, etc….
CTA variations to A/B test:
- Putting your request towards the top of the email, vs at the very end
- Underlining, bolding or italicizing your ask, vs plain text
- Asking for a specific time to meet vs. asking “what works best” for them
- Asking for a shorter amount of time vs longer → ex. “Do you have 5 minutes?” vs “Do you have 15 minutes?”
To locate your enchantment email, send a variant with your standard inquiry versus the improved inquiry.
A/B Testing Emails for Click Rate
At the point when a reader clicks your email, you realize that something appealed to them.
To capture their attention longer and understand what resources are resonating, try one of these A/B tests.
Idea 10: Different Types Of Content Formats
Do your subscribers like to watch, tune in, or read the content you send them?
Knowing which content formats get the most clicks will give you a better idea of the types of resources you should share with similar prospects in the future. Try linking out to:
- Written case studies vs video case studies
- Podcasts vs blog posts
- Web pages as PDFs
Idea 11: Link Formatting
People click on links that are easy to spot in the content. If you usually include your links in line with your text, try version “B” where you bold your link and enter it onto its own line.
See how the above link lists a metric. It’s another strategy to increase clicks. The more specific you are, the more persuasive your link is. Using a precise number makes your story more trustworthy in the eyes of your recipient.
Idea 12: Link Text Length
As indicated by MailChimp, 8-12 words are the connection sweet spot.
In the event that your connection content is typically well above or under 8-12 words, experiment with this strategy by A/B testing your standard email with another, improved form.
Idea 13: Use Anchor Text To Appeal To Curiosity, Empathy, or FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Here’s the manner by which to test which emotional appeals or interests work best to convince your contacts to take a look at what you’re sharing:
Idea 14: Vary The Number Of Links
Less is more. According to the ‘paradox of choice,’ theory, the more choices we have, the more unlikely we are to make any decision at all.
End Part………
I hope with this chapter, you have understood why A/B testing is important and how it can help you to improve your click as well as conversion rates of email marketing campaigns.
In the next chapter of our free online email marketing course, we will be sharing how to generate more leads with your email marketing campaign.
