It may take a lot of trial and error to get your email marketing strategy to the results you want. The last thing you want is a scattershot approach of throwing everything you can at it to see what sticks. If you approach each campaign individually Optimize and test your email campaigns make drastic changes every time, you’ll confuse your audience and miss out on valuable data that can help you improve. So, how do you effectively test your email campaigns?
That’s where optimization comes in. So far in this blog series , we’ve covered copywriting, email design, compliance issues, and segmentation. However, these are the creative and logistical aspects of email marketing. Now, we’re ready to talk about the strategy behind your emails—and how to elevate your campaign results from average to extraordinary.
Email Campaign Best Practices
Before we get into your overall implementation and testing strategy, let’s talk about small tweaks that can improve your performance. These are a bit outside the scope of email design and copywriting. Rather, they’re strategies for improving the performance of every email across a variety of providers and devices.
Shorten the subject line
In part two of this blog series , we discussed the importance of brevity in subject lines. We focused on the readability and brevity of short subject lines, but there’s another, more technical reason to keep them short and sweet: most email clients will only display a certain number of characters.
The desktop client can display a subject line of up to 78-80 characters, but this depends on the width of the message pane set by the user, the size of the computer screen, etc.
Mobile clients typically display subject lines of 38 to 42 characters. As you can see, that’s about half of what you see on the desktop!
Therefore, you can’t be sure how much of your subject line your recipient saw. If they check your email on their phone, they could be missing half of your professionally written copy!
The solution, of course, is to keep your subject lines as short as possible — usually no longer than 35 to 40 characters. The optimal number for an email subject line is 41 characters or 7 words . This gives you enough space to entice opens without losing valuable information.
Check your code when testing your email campaigns
Especially when you’re first building your sender reputation, you can’t afford to make any mistakes. Poorly designed emails are often marked as indonesia telegram data spam – and if your emails aren’t user-friendly, your recipients may mark them as spam, too. The more reports you receive, the more your sender reputation will drop, which can result in your domain being blacklisted by certain email providers.
Play it safe. Before you send your first campaign, make sure your emails are “clean” from top to bottom. That means avoiding the spam trigger words we listed in Part Two of this series, adding GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliant unsubscribe analyzing the pros and cons of email marketing links, and checking your email code for errors.
Common encoding and formatting issues that can trigger spam filters include:
- Too many different colors and fonts
- Subject line in all caps
- Hyperlinks (especially images) pointing to questionable websites
- Messy code with HTML errors
Don’t worry too much about the label if you deb directory misplace it; a small mistake won’t land you in the spam box. However, when it’s so easy to validate your code and check for any simple errors, it doesn’t make sense to skip these checks before hitting “Send.”
Use emojis in your subject lines — but not too many
Multiple studies have shown that most marketing emails don’t include emojis in their subject lines — only about five to one percent. This can make emojis seem like an easy way to grab your audience’s attention. If most of your competitors don’t use emojis, shouldn’t you include them to stand out?
Not necessarily. First, it’s important to note that emoji appear in different forms on various platforms. Some email clients, like Gmail, convert emoji to other images that don’t look very good. There are also significant differences between Mac/iOS emoji and their Android counterparts.
This means you should use Unicode symbols whenever possible to ensure cross-platform compatibility. Unfortunately, these sometimes don’t look as good as the platform-specific emojis.
The bigger problem is that emojis can come across as unprofessional or spammy, especially for marketing emails. Some studies have found that using emojis can actually reduce open rates and increase the number of abuse reports for legitimate emails. Others have noted that emojis may slightly increase open rates — but only if the subject line is already eye-catching .
In other words, always make sure your copy is well-written before adding emojis. Avoid using emojis in place of words. If emojis don’t serve the purpose of your campaign, it’s best to skip them altogether. (Any administrative email, such as an invoice notification, must look professional and therefore isn’t a good choice for emojis.)
Ultimately, it depends on your brand. We recommend:
- Only use emojis in campaigns sent to mature audiences or market segments with high engagement
- Test your emojis to ensure they appear similar across providers and devices
- Only use emojis to enhance your subject line, if they don’t add anything to your copy, avoid using them
- Choose emojis that express emotion or symbolize interest, such as one of the many facial emojis or a “strong arm,” rather than generic or alarming symbols, such as a warning sign or exclamation point
When deciding whether to use emojis or which emojis to choose, it’s important to test variations. This brings us to the essential ingredient for email strategy improvement: A/B testing.
The Secret to A/B Testing Your Email Campaigns
It’s hard to get an email perfect the first time you send it. No matter how well you know your audience or craft your creative, there will always be something to tweak. Something as small as the color of your CTA button can affect your results.
That’s where A/B testing comes in. For each test, choose one factor and create two versions of it. For example, you can test whether a red or blue CTA button provides a higher click-through rate. You can also test variations of copy, personalization, and header images.
Before you start testing, be aware that you’ll need an audience of at least 600 to produce statistically significant results. However, if you haven’t reached that yet, it doesn’t hurt to develop a testing methodology so you can make it a habit. Once you start testing regularly, you’ll find that simple automated tests provide a lot of valuable insights. By using winning test factors, you can increase open and click-through rates by up to 10%!
Factors to consider when doing A/B testing
Most marketers start by testing subject lines. After all, that’s what convinces your recipients to open your email! It’s a good idea to A/B test all of your subject lines until you know which ones perform best.
Your marketing automation platform can run A/B testing for you. This usually involves sending your campaign to only a portion of your audience (usually 20%). Half of this portion sees version A; the other sees version B. The system measures which version produces a higher open rate (or whatever metric you want), and then sends the campaign with the winning version to the rest of your audience.
Again, you need at least 600 recipients to get valuable insights from an A/B test, so make sure the test portion of your audience is large enough. For example, if your list is only 1,200 people, 20% is too little. Split your audience 50-50 and test against each other.
Subject line characteristics you can A/B test:
- Whether to include emojis
- Two different expressions
- To personalize or not to personalize (Learn more about personalization options and best practices in Part I of this series)
- Mention quantity or price
- Copywriting style (check out tips on good subject line copywriting in part 2 of this series):
- Problem and Statement
- Active and Passive Voice
- Emergency or not
Email design features you can A/B test:
- Header Image
- Title copy
- Personalization or not
- Problem and Statement
- text
- Personalization or not
- Line Spacing
- CTA button placement
- CTA button color
- Single Column vs Grid
Develop your testing strategy
You can only A/B test one factor at a time, which means there’s a limit to how many times you can test a given campaign. You don’t want to send duplicate campaigns to your list, which is why it’s crucial to segment your list first. (Learn more about audience segmentation in part three of this series .) Then, choose your test factors and how each test will lead into the next.
To determine the initial factors to test, identify the primary goal of your campaign. Do you want recipients to click through to a landing page? If so, you’ll want to A/B test your CTA copy, color, and/or placement (but only test one variable at a time). Are you sending a general engagement campaign and just want a good open rate? A/B test various aspects of your subject line (again, one at a time).
Let’s be clear: only one test factor at a time!
Make sure you’re not introducing multiple variables into two subject lines. For example, if you want to test whether emojis increase open rates, that should be determined solely by the difference between your A and B subject lines. If you also change the language or add personalization in version B, you’ve just introduced two more test variables and your results will be unclear.
Step 1: Formulate a hypothesis.
Once you’ve decided on your test variable, formulate a hypothesis that can be easily proven or disproven. For example, you might predict that a red CTA button will get more clicks than a blue button. This is easy to test; either it does, or it doesn’t. Alternatively, the difference is insignificant (more on this later).
Step 2: Set goals.
Decide which results will prove or disprove your hypothesis. This goes hand in hand with the campaign goal (usually the value of a specific metric). Before you set your goals, establish a baseline. If you haven’t started your email marketing strategy yet, you probably don’t have this. That’s okay; you can use comparable benchmarks from your industry.
Then, choose the metric you want to test. Maybe you want to increase your click-through rate by 10%. You’re running an A/B test to try to hit that rate. Even if you don’t hit that goal, it’s worth noting as you continue testing so you can see which factors have a greater impact on your desired outcome.
For example, let’s say you predict that a red CTA button will outperform a blue button, and your goal is to increase click-through rate by 10% compared to your baseline. Your A/B test shows that your red CTA gets more clicks, but only 5% more than your baseline. Now you know you should use the red CTA, but you need to improve another factor to reach your goal.
Step 2: Choose what you will do with the test results.
Whether your hypothesis was correct and your red CTA received more clicks, or your blue CTA actually performed better, you’ll want to keep the winning color for all future campaigns. You can now test other factors, such as the position of the button or the headline that appears above it. As long as you only test one factor at a time, you can gradually move to continuous testing.
If both colors perform better, you have two options. You can A/B test another key factor in click-through rate, or you can test two other colors. Typically, however, you’ll want to choose another factor that influences click-through rate, such as the actual copy of the button or its placement in the email. These factors may outweigh the impact of button color. If you don’t see a significant change between the A and B variables, don’t get too busy testing a specific factor.
Step 3. Test and record regularly.
Throughout your testing plan, keep track of your results, including the winning factors and their impact on your metrics. Over time, you’ll see a pattern emerge, such as red CTAs always performing better, but you’ll hit your click goal only when they also have concise button copy.
Keep detailed records of the hypotheses, goals, and results of each test. After a few months of testing, you’ll have a good idea of what works for your audience. For example, you might determine that you get the best click-through rate when you use a red CTA button with very short copy at the top of your email design.
That said, testing never really ends (sorry!). As your audience changes and expands, their preferences will change, too. You’ll also likely see different trends across various types of campaigns or with different audience segments. That’s why it’s so important to record everything so you can make informed decisions for each campaign.
Summarize
Email marketing success is never a one-time thing. What works for one brand may not work for you. As you develop your strategy, you’ll find the right combination of copy, design, structure, and testing that works for you. The key is to have a system that incorporates the best practices we’ve discussed, consistent copy and design, full compliance with customer privacy laws, and a strong testing methodology. Wow! Don’t worry, it’s doable.
