#10 in Our 20 for 20 Series
Split Testing and Your Email Marketing Campaign
How do you know the best time to send email?
What kind of subject lines are best?
Will people respond more to my name or my company’s name?
These are very important questions and I’m going to answer them for you.
Welcome to 20 for 20 where we share our 20 Best Tips for Email Marketing and Business to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.
Let's Run A Little Experiment
Today I want to demystify the subject of split testing. What is it? Split testing is just a fancy way of saying “let’s run an experiment.” Let’s say you took the advice from our last email and wrote 10 subject lines for your message (great idea!). You’ve narrowed it down to two that both seem awesome even though they’re different—how do you choose which one to use? That’s easy—use split testing.
Here’s how it works. Most advanced email marketing software or service providers like us can set up an email to try out BOTH your subject lines on your audience. Let’s say you have 10,000 people on your list. You can send, say, 1,500 one subject line, 1,500 the other subject line, and then measure the results. The winning subject line will get sent to the other 7,000 people on your list. The software handles the send logistics to make sure that random samples are seeing each subject line, and it keeps track so readers don’t get two messages.
Another use for split testing is you may not know what time of day, or even days of the week, your audience is most likely to respond. Don’t just guess—use a split test to find out.
We’ve mentioned split testing subject lines and days of the week. What else can you split test in an email? Virtually everything. Once you lock in a day of the week, what time is most optimal to catch your audience’s attention? Is it 6am, 12pm over the lunch break, or 6pm in the evening if it’s not work-related at all? Test, test, test! You can also split test copy inside an email, like headlines, body copy, or even CTA (call-to-action) text to see what resonates with your target audience best. These are all things that will help you get to know your audience and zero in on how they like to be communicated to (and when they’re most receptive to your messaging).
Now that you’re really excited about all the testing possibilities, we have to give you a warning. Make sure you only test one thing at a time. It’s subject lines OR day of the week OR time of day OR CTA text OR whatever you fancy. But if you test multiple things in a single split test, you really won’t know which drove the results. So just don’t do it. Save it for the next test.
By the way, you don’t want to just use ONE split test and make sweeping assumptions. Make sure you test your conclusion a couple of times before you start sending ALL your broadcasts on Sunday nights.
What’s the difference between split testing, AB testing, and multivariate testing? Essentially nothing. They are all the same concept. We can actually test up to 8 different variables (if you REALLY can’t pick a subject line) and that’s just a more complicated split test.
One note of caution when you start using split testing—be sure to brush up on your statistics so you understand what “statistically significant” and “small sample bias” actually mean. Hint—don’t send a split to too small of a sample and start making crazy conclusions.
I hope this has helped you understand what split testing is and why you’d want to use it—go out there and try some experiments.
But before I go, we always give something away during our 20 for 20 and this episode is no different—congratulations to W. Haynie for winning this week’s prize, which is a free 20-minute audit of your email campaign. Contact us for details on how to claim your prize and thanks for listening.
If you’re interested in discussing our service, the first step is to
book a free 20-minute consultation to see if we might be a good fit for you.
Stay tuned for next time when I talk about Brand Voice. Yes, your brand has a voice—and I hope it’s the one you intended.
In the meantime, be sure to sign up for our 20 for 20 campaign if you haven’t done so already. BONUS: You’ll also receive our Top 5 Mistakes Almost All Businesses Make with Their Email Marketing.
