When you ask around Adestra what everyone’s favourite MessageFocus feature is, the answer is always the split test. It’s one of the top ways to quickly increase your email marketing success…
How does split testing work?
Split testing is a quick and easy way to maximise your open and click rates. This feature allows you to create multiple variants of your campaign so that you can test different variations of these against one another to see which is the best performing. This can be anything from testing the subject line or from name, to testing the actual content of your email by editing the HTML variant.
When split testing we always recommend that you send the variants to between 10-20% of you list. So for an A/B split test on a subject line that is being sent to 20,000 recipients you should send each variant to 10% of your list. The winning variant can then be sent to the remaining 80% of your list, and this can be automatically scheduled with a set time delay, depending on how time sensitive your email is. You can judge your winning variant on opens, clicks, or clicks of opens depending on what you are testing for. This process can be incredibly quick, often only adding a few minutes at most onto your campaign creation time.
This is a great way to quickly increase reporting on a campaign by campaign basis, but also to gauge trends in what your recipients like over several sends. Check out this case study to see how one of our clients, Oxford University Press, used the split testing feature to increase their open rates by 6%.
Made simple
Having read the above I am sure you are sold on why this is such a great idea for your email marketing, but getting started with split testing may seem a bit daunting. If you are stuck for ideas, check out these quick tips for creating your first split test. The easiest way to start using this feature is to test out different subject lines. Consider changing:
- Word placement
Why we love split testing! –v- Split testing – why we love it! - Change keywords
Why we love split testing! –v- Why we like split testing! - Personalised
Elsa, why we love split testing! –v- Why we love split testing!
If you need some tips or ideas on subject lines check out our 2013 Subject Line Research.
If you would like some strategic advice on split testing contact your account manager today or find out more about this feature.
What ideas have you tested? Share them in the comments below.