Crafting a successful email for your campaign can be tough. Great results depend on coming up with the right words to say, what to offer, how much content to include, etc. You could take your best guess, or you could let your audience decide! A/B testing allows you to split your list into two or more smaller groups, send variations of your email to each group, then send the best performing email to the remainder of contacts. Here are 7 different ways you can test your emails.
1. Subject Line & Preheader Text
Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to speak with someone, but weren’t sure exactly how to start the conversation? A/B testing lets you try out conversation starters in email and run with the more successful one (unfortunately not possible in real life yet!). By far the most commonly tested email component in split testing, the subject line is your shot at grabbing attention. You don’t have to come up with two entirely different subject lines either, as even a slight variation in how you word things can make a big impact. “50% off is yours” could work measurably better than “Take 50% off your next purchase”.
If you’re feeling confident in your chosen subject line, preheader text could be tested. As email use on mobile devices becomes more common, preheader text is coming in to play, as it is appears with the subject line and gives a glimpse into the content of the email.
2. Call-to-Action
Another popular option for split testing, the call-to-action is basically an email’s way of asking the customer if they’d like to continue to engage. If you’re selling a product, “Buy Now” might seem like the right call-to-action, as it gives the customer the feeling of instant gratification. It may be possible, though, that the phrase is too aggressive, and the customer may want to “learn more” or “get details” before they pull the trigger. This is where A/B testing can really come in handy.
3. Email Offers/Promo Codes
Are you offering a deal or incentive to your audience? You might have an idea of what would entice your customer to act, but it’s possible a free shipping promo outperforms a discount code, even if it costs you less. Try offering different offers and see which offer performs best before sending the winning offer to the remainder of your group.
4. Body Content
The meat of the email can potentially be what drives your audience to engage. Too much content may drown them in details, and too little may leave them uninformed. You can test the amount of content, or even the voice/tone of the text.
5. Design
If you or your designer have been pushing for new and exciting design changes, only to get pushback from the higher-ups, this could be your chance to prove success. If you need some inspiration, take a look at our previous post to get a few tips on email design.
6. From Name
Who are you? Who, who, who, who? The email recipient wants to know. You may have seen suggestions to use an actual person’s name to give the message a personal touch, like Jim from Acme Corp. This could be a great idea for your brand, or it could make things weird for your audience. There’s one way to find out!
7. Going Beyond the Email – Landing Page Variations
If your goal is conversions, you can take the testing beyond the click and onto a landing page. Test out different designs, form fields, or photography. While this type of testing might require manual evaluation of conversion rates, it could make sense if your list size is large enough.
If you are an emfluence Marketing Platform customer, our new A/B Split tool allows you to test these options! While we don’t recommend doing all of them at once (which probably wouldn’t really be A/B testing anymore), trying new things out on each email send can get you increased engagement, as well as insight into what works for your campaigns. Now, make like a good email campaign and split!
