Improving E-Mail Performance Through Testing
Trial and error is a central part of marketing. Tips to make your trials a bit more scientific.
Trial and error is a central part of marketing. Tips to make your trials a bit more scientific.
Too often, marketers cling to the same campaign elements and tactics without thoroughly testing email variables to determine what will drive performance higher. In fact a Jupiter Research study I recently concluded on the topic found that overall, about 60 percent of marketers don’t test. Challenged by resource constraints, most of these non-testers simply feel they don’t have the time to regularly test their campaigns.
Yet our research found the marketers who are testing on a regular basis (at least every other mailing) are almost twice as likely to have email conversion rates that exceed industry averages by one to two percent, as compared with marketers who don’t test. Clearly, the effort of testing email variables (e.g. subject lines, content) is offset by better results. Testing is really the only way for a marketer to determine which element drives higher results. It’s critical for optimizing email campaigns. To ease into testing, let’s take a look at some of the rudimentary items to test.
Identify Marketing Goals. While this sounds very basic, I do find on occasion that email becomes a primary promotional tool simply because it’s inexpensive. It is easy to get mired in the monotony of getting the email out and lose sight of specific campaign or mailing goals. Before you can conduct any testing you must first know what the desired outcome is.
Identify Consistent Audience Segments. One of the first elements to test, and an early deliverable that comes out of testing, is audience segmentation. Ensure your email solution can support multiple lists, and customer profiles can be easily divided into segments. Some attributes you’ll want to test related to audience segmentation include demographic data (e.g. income, age, sex); behavior (e.g. open, click); purchase history (e.g. recency, frequency); acquisition source; attitudes and domain (e.g. AOL, Yahoo). I’ve discussed using behavior and attitudinal segmentation in previous columns; take a look at those for more ideas.
Experiment With Message Formats. While HTML is the preferred format for most marketers, anti-spam measures, including image and HTML blocking at many leading ISPs, underscore the importance of testing message format. Look for differences in delivery, open rate, clickthrough rate and conversion. Testing formats on a domain level and obtaining insight into the domain level performance is critical to really understand the impact the message format has on performance.
Tinker With Content. One area likely to have the largest impact on campaign performance is testing different creative elements. Experiment with the subject line, personalized campaign elements, number of products and/or offers presented, and message tone. Research I’ve conducted has found personalization can have a dramatic impact on email conversion rates. Determining if personalization is appropriate for your campaigns can only be achieved through testing.
Test Frequency. In order to determine your optimal mailing frequency or the impact of triggered lifecycle campaigns, test message frequency over time. My column on message frequency offers some ideas on alternate mailing intervals.
While testing is beneficial and all the above items are just some of the variables you can test, it’s very important to adhere to the following basic testing guidelines to measure which element is driving the results.
Trial and error is a central part of marketing. Hopefully, these suggestions will make your trials a bit more scientific. Good luck — and let me know how it turns out.
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