What can you learn from email marketing tests?

1 Why test your emails?

Email marketing tests can help you improve your email marketing performance in many ways, such as increasing open rates by testing different subject lines and preheaders, or boosting click-through rates by testing calls to action and images. You can also enhance engagement and retention by testing different content formats and frequencies, while reducing unsubscribe and bounce rates by testing segmentation criteria and value propositions. Furthermore, you can grow conversions and revenue by testing offers, incentives, landing pages, and follow-up emails. By testing your emails, you can gain valuable insights into your audience's preferences, behaviors, and needs. This data can then be used to segment your audience more effectively, tailor messages more precisely, and create more personalized and relevant experiences for subscribers.

2 How to plan your email tests

Before you start testing your emails, it's important to have a clear plan and goal. Start by defining a hypothesis, which is a statement that predicts the outcome of your test based on a variable and metric. Then, choose the variable you want to test (A/B testing or multivariate testing), the metric you want to improve (open rates, click-through rates, conversions, or revenue), and the sample size and duration for your test. Finally, decide what type of email test is best for your goal and variable - split testing or dynamic testing. Online tools or calculators can help you determine the optimal sample size and duration based on your expected effect size, confidence level, and statistical significance.

3 How to execute your email tests

Once you have your plan ready, you can execute your email tests using your email marketing platform or tool. To do this, you need to create two or more versions of your email with different variations of the element you want to test. For example, if you want to test subject lines, you must create emails with the same content but different subject lines. Additionally, you have to configure your email marketing platform or tool to run your test according to your plan. This includes setting up sample size, duration, metric, test type, and criteria for choosing the winner. When ready, launch your test by sending the emails to the test groups and monitor their performance. After the test is completed, compare the performance of your email versions based on the metric and determine which one is the winner. Also, check if your results are statistically significant and support your hypothesis.

4 How to apply your test learnings

The final step of email marketing testing is to apply your learnings to improve your email marketing strategy. This could involve implementing the winning version of your email for the rest of your subscribers or future campaigns, documenting your findings in a spreadsheet or a tool, communicating the results and learnings with your team and stakeholders, and continuing to test different variables, metrics, segments, and goals. Doing so will help you benchmark for further testing and optimization, store and organize data and insights, showcase findings and recommendations, and refine your email marketing strategy to achieve better results.

5 How to avoid common email testing mistakes

Email marketing testing can be a powerful way to learn and optimize your emails, but it can also be challenging and complex. To ensure accurate results, it's important to test one variable at a time with a large enough sample size and duration. Additionally, the sample should be representative and random, while the hypothesis and metric should be clear and relevant. Lastly, the environment should remain consistent and controlled to avoid any outside factors from affecting the results. By following these best practices, you can avoid common email testing mistakes and gain valuable insights from your tests.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?