A/B split testing
Email marketing studies can tell you what works on average for others, but as they say, your mileage may vary. As an enthusiastic email marketer, you’ve been checking all the Reports of your sends. Notice how they’re never quite the same? Open and click through rates always vary – and you’ve probably been wondering why that is. After all, your newsletters are all designed in the same template and style… does this sound familiar?
Email split tests help you find out what works in your email marketing campaigns. To run an email split test, you create two or more messages (either with a different content or just a different subject line) and send them to randomized, equal portions of the larger list. You can then deliver the message with the best results, “the winner”, to the remainder of the list. AB split test takes speculation out of your email marketing strategy!
Here’s how:
With GraphicMail’s A/B split testing you have two options: The first option allows you to select 5 newsletters to compare - perhaps all with the same content, but each with different images, or even slight changes in the design or content. (You don’t have to have 5 different newsletters, you can even just do 2 if you’d prefer.) Alternatively, you can test up to 5 different subject lines for the same newsletter; say, for instance, varying in length or tone. So, if you want to test your opens, choose different subject lines for your test, and if you want to test your clicks in a newsletter, send test newsletters with a different message content and links.
Once you’ve decided what is you’d like to test, you can then decide on a percentage of your mailing list to test it on. So, if you choose to send the test to 10 % of your mailing list and you want to compare 2 newsletters, then 5 % will receive Newsletter A and 5 % will receive Newsletter B. Once you’ve figured out which one was more successful, you then send the best newsletter to the remaining 90% of your mailing list. And don’t worry: The system keeps track of who received the test, and who received which version – so none of your subscribers will receive your newsletter twice! And best of all, you’ll get statistical report for your test sends in a nifty pop – up stats table in your account.
Want to know more?
This is how AB split testing benefitted a major media company.