For many businesses and sole entrepreneurs, email marketing is a great way to engage with their audiences. Email newsletters and campaigns allow businesses to maintain contact with their audiences. It can also allow marketers like yourself to collect data on them, this could be anything from their thoughts on the product, to what they would like to see from the company going forward. As you can imagine this information is invaluable to any marketer and any business that is looking to grow and best serve their customers.
Sending your first email, however, is just scratching the surface. Have you been getting the most out of your email marketing? Whether you are new to email marketing or an old pro, A/B Testing is a great way to reach the next level in your email marketing and will result in more engagement with your audience which will lead to more conversions.
What is A/B Testing?
A/B Testing is a term used to describe testing different variables in your email marketing strategy. That’s a fancy way of saying that you send two emails and change the elements within them to see if your audience responds better to one or the other.
Benefits of A/B Testing
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Maximize Productivity
We all only have 24hrs in the day, so we need to make the most of them. A/B Testing can show you what works and what doesn’t. That way you aren’t wasting your time on marketing that does not connect with your audience.
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Learn More About Your Audience
Does your audience like links to academic writings? Do they prefer infographics? Are they more likely to open an email on Monday at 9 or Tuesday at 3? Do they like pictures more or videos?
Implementing a series of A/B tests can give you the answer to these questions as well as many others.
Many businesses assume they know their audiences very well, and of course many do, but A/B Testing may help you learn something new.
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Increase Open and Conversion Rates
At the end of the day, you are running a business and the more your audience opens and engages with your email campaigns, the more likely you will be able to convert them. This is the most tangible of the benefits you’ll see as you continue to A/B test your email marketing campaigns. 4 Simple Ways to Build Your Email Marketing List
How to Conduct Your Own A/B Test
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Make a Hypothesis
Just like in science class any good A/B test starts with a question. Any question you have about your audience regarding their engagement with your emails. You then turn that question into a statement that can be proven or disproven. This is your hypothesis. Your hypothesis could be anything from:
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My audience likes to receive emails between 8am-5pm as opposed to 6pm-10pm
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My subject lines do better when they include a joke
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Other options include: Personalized Fields, CTAs, Formatting, Etc.
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Send The Two Different Versions of Your Email
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Split your audience as evenly as possible accounting for all of the demographic information that you have on them. This is a very important step, especially if your audience members differ greatly.
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Wait…
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Record All Results: Open Rates, Click-Through Rates, etc.
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Some email clients have a built-in application that will do a lot of the work for you. You’ll be able to see those below.
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Email Marketing Clients that Provide A/B Testing Metrics
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If your email client already facilitates A/B testing you are ahead of the game. But if not, you’ll just have to take a few more detailed notes on the outcomes of your experimentation
Conclusion
Email Marketing is a great way to grow your business and make sure your customers remain engaged and happy with your brand. A/B testing is an important part of your email marketing strategy.
Even if things are already going great, everything can be improved and adding A/B testing is a great place to start.
