While you sit alone in your office, do you often ponder “what is the best day to send our weekly newsletter?” or maybe “what type of subject line would most entice my contacts to open the message?”
The answers to these questions are “it depends”. I know you hate this answer but there are many factors to consider, such as the composition of your audience, your sending frequency, and content. Getting to know your audience through testing will be more useful than any general survey. Only by testing your email campaigns, and analyzing the results, will you actually determine what works best for your audience and provide valuable insight into your email marketing.
A truly accurate test is simple to create, monitor and track. Remember, testing is not difficult unless you make it difficult. So, start planning your first test today by following these straight forward guidelines:
• Create two versions of your message that are exactly alike except for the one variable you’re trying to test (don’t change your subject line and your sending time at once or you won’t be able to determine the value of each). You might want to consider testing things such as send time and day, subject line, from name, best type of call to action, etc.
• Clearly label each message in the test so that you can easily and accurately determine the results of the test.
• Build the sending lists by randomly splitting your intended recipients in half.
Your results must provide enough data to be analyzed. The size of your test list should be large enough to elicit a large enough response that the results are statistically valid. For example, if you are normally sending to 100,000 contacts, 100 responses in your test send are not enough to go on.
Now, give your data a hug! By that I mean embrace the data by taking the time to analyze the results and apply your findings to your next email. The data should indicate a measurable lift over the control message in order to apply the new variable to your next email. For instance, if you tested sending your message on Thursday against the regularly scheduled Tuesday and the results had only a 2% increase in clicks you may want to continue to test another sending day against your control.
Remember to keep testing, because whether your metrics are below average or stellar, there is always room to grow.
Kimberly Snyder
Account Manager at Bronto
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