As a contemporary marketer, you may find that testing your email marketing campaigns falls to the bottom of your priority list.

However, testing need not be time-consuming, and the opportunity to enhance and optimize your findings may be invaluable.

In this piece, I will outline five email tests you should perform immediately to improve your results, as well as provide general testing advice.

Why conduct tests?

Testing enables you to compare and contrast various components of your email messages to see how they affect the responses of your subscribers. You may make a hypothesis about what you believe will occur, then design a test to see what really occurs.

We were able to achieve a 13% boost in click-throughs and attract thousands of additional visits to the campaign’s content through the use of easy segmentation and personalized images that appealed to each individual email recipient.

As you can see, email testing may provide a wealth of useful information that can directly impact the efficacy of your campaigns. So let’s discuss the five aspects you should test.

Now that you understand the advantages of testing your email campaigns, let’s look at five things you can test immediately to improve the performance of your emails.

Subject lines

Subject lines are likely the most often tested piece of an email, and Campaign Monitor’s A/B Test functionality makes it very easy to test yours.

Among the intriguing elements you might try with your subject lines are:

• Length – Examine the effectiveness of shorter vs longer subject lines (this is the topic of much debate in the marketing world)
• Topic – Compare two distinct subject lines to see which information is most appealing to subscribers.
• Personalization – Add personalization to identical subject lines to see if a first-name welcome, for example, improves response rates.
• Promotion/Offer – Determine which kind of promotion is more effective by comparing “Free Shipping” vs “15% Off.”

Pre-header

Utilize pre-header in your email marketing campaigns. Pre-header text is the initial line of text in your email and may function as the wingman to your email subject line by giving recipients with more context about the email’s content. This is useful in email browser preview panes. As marketers, we often neglect the possibility that pre-headers provide to raise or improve our open rate.

Among the intriguing topics you might examine in your pre-header examination are:

• Inclusion – Compare the open rate with versions with and without a pre-header. The version with the pre-header should have a greater rate of opening.
• Content — Include two distinct themes in your pre-header and see which receives the most response from your subscribers.

Time or date

The optimal time and day to send an email is one of the most frequently asked topics at Campaign Monitor. Moreover, guess what? As marketers ourselves, we tell it like it is: It depends.

And it is not an excuse.

Because every firm has a unique list, a unique amount of involvement, and, of course, unique content, there is no universal solution.

Testing the day or time you send your email is a fantastic way to see what works best for your list by observing the difference in your open and click-through rates.

If you typically send your newsletter on Monday, try sending it on Tuesday and observe the results. Or, maybe you always deliver your newsletter at 9 a.m. What would occur if you moved it to 6 a.m.?

Call to action

Are your calls to action receiving the response they merit? When was the last time that yours was tested?

Among the intriguing things you might test in your call-to-action testing are the following:

• Copy – Compare broad call-to-action phrases such as “Buy More” to more particular phrases such as “Get the Flare Jean Now.” In the past, we have conducted many A/B tests comparing benefit-focused text versus generic copy, and each time benefit-focused copy raised click-through rates by around 10%.
• Color — The color of your email’s call-to-action should compliment the rest of the message while yet standing out. Determine which contrasting colors elicit the greatest reaction by putting them to the test. Our pals at Unbounce chose the color orange as their winner.

Content

We’ve all heard that material is king a million times, but do you know what content works best in your emails?

Among the intriguing aspects of your material that you might test are:

• Length– Short-form or extended-length material. Does your audience like brief excerpts with a link to read more on your site, or do they want to dive further into lengthy copy?
• Specific or Generic – Our Dynamic Information tool at Campaign Monitor allows you to show different content to various individuals depending on what you know about them. You may test dynamic content vs generic material to see if there is an increase in click-throughs.
• Positive or Negative Expression – You may be scratching your head as you read this, but you can also evaluate the positive against negative of your email’s wording. When you use positivity in your email text, you engage your reader’s brain in a much more powerful manner, making it easier for them to comprehend your important messaging and boosting their urge to click-through and buy your goods. We conducted an experiment utilizing positive wording and found that it raised our email conversion rate by 22%, so it is certainly worth testing.

Conclusion

When it comes to email marketing optimization, A/B testing is one of the finest methods to determine what works and what doesn’t. Testing one email against another is the only way to see what resonates with your subscribers, so begin with something basic.

• Conduct A/B testing. Don’t simply run one, run many. Start by testing subject lines to see what entices people to click and then do a second test to determine which content or design they prefer.
• Gather the data. Utilize your analytics to evaluate your test findings. The items with the highest open and click-through rates are the most popular with your audience.
• Employ the data. Utilize the aggregated information from your many tests. Analyze the successful emails and combine their varied elements.