5 Tips for Testing Your Email Marketing Messages to obtain better results in Q4: 10-29-2007

The real win in the face of digital marketing is measurement. Instant results based on your last email marketing message can be a valuable learning tool if approached with thought. There is no better time than early in the fourth quarter to practice testing. Form sub-groups out of your groups This is the first and most important step in testing and applies to the other four tips. You may be grouping your list into distinct groups based on customer profile and are sending them messages that pertain only to them. This is terrific! Now split each group into two or three sub-groups and send the same message with slight tweaks to measure what works and what doesn’t. Subject Lines Send email campaigns with very different subject lines, but with the same content in the email body to each sub-group. This will help you learn what drives higher open rates. Imagery Have you every thought about what effect it might have on an action decision if you included a picture of a dog or a picture of a tree in your email template? Keeping all else the same, send one graphical design to one sub-group and entirely different design to another. Link Positioning Positioning both in regards to physical positioning within the email and whether to include banner links or text links. Its worth experimenting. After all, don’t most of your links lead to an action decision? Timing Are your customer’s weekend warriors and would rather plow through email on Saturday and Sunday? Or are most of them in a different time zone? It’s worth testing different days and different times of day for send activity. Maybe you’ll find out that the normal Tuesday mid-morning send isn’t right for your contacts.