How do you use data and analytics to inform your subject line and preheader strategy?

Why are subject lines and preheaders so important to email marketing campaigns? ??♀? Because your subscribers will see them first! Mobile email access, when only the sender's name and subject line are displayed, increases the risk. You might have the most creative email campaigns, but your message won't be read if your subject line isn't captivating. Lower email open rates lower deliverability. Spam filters reduce spammy language. Email subject lines should be catchy without becoming spammy. Even if they do, current Internet users' distrust anything that sounds shady. Instead of making assumptions about what will work, it's better to put your hypotheses about effective email subject lines to the test with actual data.

Testing is key for many areas of digital marketing, but it's especially crucial for email marketing since sending without testing means you have no chance to improve the current open rates. But utilizing a small portion of your list to measure changes in open rates, you'll be on your way to greatly increasing the opens overall.

Plain and simple. Subscriber who don't open, don't become customers. Subject line and preheaders are there to help your subscribers make the decision to open that email. Testing is a must!

?? Before testing, set goals. What do you want to improve? Open rate, CTR, unsubs. Goals help you focus testing and quantify performance. ?? Segment your audience: To test subject lines and preheaders, segment your audience by demographics, interests, or behaviour. ?? Brainstorm audience-friendly topic lines and preheaders. Try alternative forms, lengths, and tones for each audience segment. ?? Test one variable at a time to accurately quantify the impact of your subject line and preheader. ?? Choose the right test method: A/B, multivariate, and segmentation testing are available for topic lines and preheaders.

It's key to keep track of the changes that you're planning to test. This might not seem important the first or second time you're trying things, but as you continue to experiment over the life of your email marketing campaign you can lose valuable time by testing things you've already tried. A spreadsheet for tracking your experiments is particularly crucial if you're not the only person working on this campaign. Providing your team with a single source of truth will greatly benefit everyone's learning, and the results of the overall email marketing campaign.

Most of the time, the goal of A/B testing should be to measure: 1) Engagement 2) Conversions The challenge with A/B testing is most just slap together a few different subject lines and send them out without any mechanism to track results. IE - after the A/B there isn't clear data informing you of the next step. This is why it's important to have categories of subject lines so as you're testing you can see from the data: >> Fear-based subject lines work better than logical arguments. Or >> Long subject line text increases engagement over short.

?? Choose the right email marketing platform: Pick a multivariate or A/B testing email marketing software. ?? Test groups: Choose small groups to test topic lines and preheaders. Consider demographic, behavioural, or interest-based audience groupings. ?? Test your email marketing platform's testing features. Test the subject line, preheader, or both. Select the percentage of your audience to receive each email version. ?? Evaluate your results: After your tests have run long enough, assess which email version performed best. Consider open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Don't be intimidated by the fact that you likely haven't looked at sample size tests since high school math! You'll find the online calculators easy to use, I promise.

The effectiveness of certain subject lines and preheaders can vary depending on the time of day or week they are sent. Testing emotive language, emojis, short vs long subjects, etc. are all ways to test, but also think about the time of day and what the subscriber may be doing when they see that subject line. Are they at their desk with full attention to read every word? OR are they in line at the grocery store at 6pm where everyone is just trying to get home? OR is it Black Friday and every single email in their inbox has a % of $ in it?

?? Examine your test results: Compare each subject line and preheader change to the baseline. ?? Utilise your data to evaluate your subject lines and preheaders. What's been the impact on email performance? ?? Optimise future email messages using test results. Tweak your subject lines and preheaders based on your tests for each segment. ?? Test again: Always test and improve your subject lines and preheaders. Continue experimenting! ?? Focus on your business goals' measurements. If measurements don't affect your bottom line, don't obsess about them. Instead, focus on the broader picture and use testing data to make strategic decisions that will increase your email marketing success over time.

The way we analyze results is focusing on a few key outcomes: 1) Email Engagement How did the segment/subscribers interact with the email. 2) Clicks & Traffic How were click rates impacted? 3) Website Engagement What did those email users do once they landed on your site? Did they immediately bounce? Or did they stay and click around? 4) Conversions You might find a personalized subject line leads to great open rates and high click-through rates, but terrible conversion rates. Or that fear based subject lines have lower open rates, but the conversion rates are amazing. If you were only looking for open rates in either scenario - your assumptions about what to do next could be WAY off the mark for your goals.