Your subject line is the first thing your customers see in their inbox, and a carefully crafted one can substantially increase both open rates and your bottom line.
The same goes for your content, creatives, and offers as well.
But how can you tell which ones are truly the best?
You can find the answer by incorporating A/B testing into your email marketing campaign. (If you want to skip ahead to set up your campaign, click here.)
Creative vs Subject Line [What are you Testing?]
You can utilize two types of A/B tests in BuyerGenomics:
- Subject Line Tests
- Creative Content Tests
To determine which type of A/B test to use, first understand your goal: are you optimizing open rate or click-through rate?
If you’re trying to optimize your open rate, you will want to set up a subject line test. If you want to optimize your click-through rate, then a creative content test would be more appropriate.
When you’re setting up your test, you will want to control for all other factors. If you’re running a subject line test, make sure your creative content stays the same. In the same way, if you are testing creative content, make sure the subject line is the same across your emails.
Configure your Test [How are you Testing?]
Once you’ve decided what you want to test, it’s time to decide how you’re going to implement the test. With BuyerGenomics, you have two useful resources to choose from - split test, and test and roll.
Split Test
A split test allows you to vary your message/treatment to your entire target - splitting it 50/50. One half receives one subject line/creative, while the other half gets a different treatment.
The configuration is simple - move the slider to 100% of the target, and BuyerGenomics will handle the rest.
Test and Roll
With the Test and Roll, feature, you have a few more options at your disposal:
- The size of your target you will test;
- The criteria will you test on, and;
- How long the test will run.
First, choose what percentage of your target to use for your test while also determining your win criteria (opens, clicks, click-through rate, or conversions). Make sure your testing group is statistically significant - you will want to make sure you’re sending to at least 10,000 recipients.
Then, select how long you want the test to run for before sending out the winning creative to the rest of the target.
You can set your test to run anywhere between 1 and 24 hours, though it’s best practice to set the length to a full 24 hours to control for time of day, or at least 4 hours to give the software enough time to gather substantial data.
Confirm your Test
Once all of your parameters are set, a breakdown of your A/B test will appear in the campaign overview, detailing:
- Send time
- Test target
- Versions A and B of the creative content or subject line
In addition, a Test and Roll will display:
- The hypothesized winning creative (represented by a crown symbol)
- The winning criteria
- The testing time frame
Only after the test is over and the winner has been determined will BuyerGenomics automatically send the emails with the winning subject line/creative content to the remaining members of your base.
This is all part of the process of testing and learning. With each test you design and deploy, your organization will become more intelligent, efficient, and profitable.