A/B Testing Your Email Marketing

Improving your email marketing has to do with improving your open rates and your click-through rates, both of which will enhance revenue. Think about it, moving your click-through rates even from 2.7% to 3% for an audience of 100,000 strong means 300 more customers per email campaign are arriving at your website. A great way to move those needles is through A/B testing.

A/B testing, in the email marketing sense, is the process of sending one variation of an email to a portion of your audience, and different variation of the same email to another portion of your audience. This testing will show which variation yields the best results, such as revenue or open rate. Once a winning variation is declared, it is sent to the remainder of your subscribers.

Let’s look at why this is such an excellent method of increasing the results of email marketing.

• 1st is because in a study done by Litmus they found that only 39% of brands are taking advantage of this method. This likely means your competitors are not optimizing their emails, leaving a massive opportunity for you.
• 2nd is because in that same study, Litmus found that brands who do take advantage of A/B Testing earn 20% more than ones that don’t.
• 3rd is that A/B testing can help you uncover high-impact changes.
• And finally, A/B testing takes the opinion out of the decision-making process. It gives you real data to move forward with.

Ok, so you’re on board with A/B Testing. Excellent! There are many ways you can test your emails. Elements You’ll want to consider are;

1. One of the biggest keys to your open rates – Your Subject Line
2. You can test your calls-to-action.
   1. Is the copy working?
   2. “Build Mine” vs “Shop Now”
   3. Does the color need to change?
   4. Should it be under the copy or above the fold?
3. You can test your visuals. A/B test to decide which hero image will work better, which is an excellent way to direct your photography and future designs.
4. You can test personalization. Will your audience respond better or worse to a personalized email that includes their name?
5. A great overall element to test is your style, especially if you are considering a template change. Create an email in your current one and another in your proposed one to see how it performs and identify potential successes and shortcomings.

The possibilities on what you can test are vast, and the more you test, the better insight you will have on your subscribers. Remember, this is all about bringing value to that PERSON’s inbox.

Hopefully, now you have a better picture of not only what A/B testing is, but what it can do for you.

• It all starts with a hypothesis.
• Will my subscribers respond better to this or to that?
• Be sure to test one element at a time. This will yield much more exact data when analyzing your results.
• Once your test has been run, and the winner decided, take time to analyze your results.
• How were your open and click-through rates?
• Did the winner yield the conversions you wanted?
• Be sure to record those analytics and share them with your team so that everyone can improve together.

Are you interested in seeing how A/B Testing can improve your email marketing with Ballistic Agency? Contact us to speak with an email marketing pro we’d love to help you optimize your eCommerce.