Why does one email campaign perform better than another? There’s an easy way to find out… and the answer is testing. Testing is the best way to discover what does and doesn’t work for your customers. Yet 50% of marketers still don’t do it.  Continuously testing emails ensures your messages are relevant and wanted by your audience. The more engaged customers are, the more likely they are to keep coming back. 

What to test 

So, you want to take your emails to the next level? Well, the only way to do that is to test, test, test. Have a look at the checklist below for all the things you can and should be testing.

Subject Lines

You may be sick and tired of hearing it, but that’s because it’s damn important. For those who aren’t actually opening your email, the subject line is your entire message, so you’ve got to get it right. With OM3 you can run up to 10 tests at once, so here are examples:

Try out extreme lengths – subject lines between 20 and 65 characters tend to under perform, so try ones on either end of the spectrum.

Make it personal – speak to your reader directly by adding their names to the subject line.

Ask questions – ‘Have you heard about our sale?’ rather than ‘Sale now on’.

Three ways to use emojis – you can use them instead of words, as punctuation, and as illustrations. Give them a go and see what works.

Make the most of external events – jump on the bandwagon and ride on the back of external events to give yourself a fresh, relevant feel.

Play with your tone of voice – try formal, try informal, add a sense of urgency, change your point of view and use pronouns like ‘we’ and ‘our’.

Sending

It’s not all about subject lines, you know? There are so many more things to test to make sure your emails are having the biggest possible impact. Optimizing something as simple as the time of day your emails are delivered can increase your open, click-through and conversion rates by 30%. Don’t miss out on your chance to watch your customer engagements soar.

Friendly from name – if customers have dedicated account managers, personalize it with that. Maybe try a team name, or just your brand name.

From address – if you’re still using a ‘donotreply@xyz.com’ change it. Change it now.

Day of the week – is your brand or product more suited for the weekend or are subscribers more receptive on Mondays? Only one way to find out…

Time of day – if you’re sending out large volumes of emails, try giving Send Time Optimization a go – it identifies the best time for individual contacts, so you don’t have to.

Creative

Figure out what template your subscribers prefer, or what content is the most effective for your campaign. A study by Litmus found that 51% of all email subscribers opt out of emails when they don’t display or work well on smartphones, so design is essential. Litmus has also predicted shorter, bite-size content as being a top email trend for 2018. If you haven’t tried it, or don’t believe it, then it’s time to give it a go:

Layout – mix things up: try one column, two columns, lots of imagery and not much copy or lots of copy and not much imagery.

Copy – this is your chance to be bold and try something different to your standard messaging; play around with long and short form, make use of bullet points and, if you don’t already do it, give personalization a go.

Fonts – to really make an impact experiment with your font colors, particularly if you always stick to one, and try different fonts (if your brand guidelines allow!).

CTAs – try out different styles (i.e. links in text vs. buttons), colors and shapes, and vary the copy you use. Be more adventurous than ‘click here’.

Contact us for more recommendations, tips and best practices.