Top ways to enhance your open rates through email A/B testing

One of the most common ways for businesses to nurture leads and stay top of mind with their audiences is through email marketing. Many companies that have seen significant success from digital marketing campaigns have done so because they identified the most effective digital marketing tactics, learned everything they could about them, put them into practice, and didn't stop until they were successful.

You'd think that with so many marketing options available on social media these days, from sponsored posts to auto-play video advertising, email marketing is obsolete or at the very least on its way out. That is not the case states the Digital Marketing Jacksonville experts. According to the latest report from the Content Marketing Institute, 87 percent of B2-B marketers utilize email marketing to nurture prospects. While this strategy is widely used, it faces stiff competition in today's inbox. The average office worker receives 121 emails each day, with 235.6 billion business emails sent and received each day. That number is only projected to rise in 2019 and beyond.

So, how can you stand out in today's congested email and send messages that your target audience will read? The solution is easier said than done: you must send excellent emails that people want to read. While it isn't easy, the beauty of email marketing is that you can see the open rate, click rate, and other metrics for practically every email you send.

With so much information available, it's foolish to rely solely on intuition to optimize your email marketing. Use A/B testing to continuously improve your performance and raise the ROI of your email marketing efforts by putting this knowledge to work for you.

In a Nutshell: A/B Testing

A/B testing does not imply that you throw a bunch of different tactics at the wall and see what sticks. A/B tests, on the other hand, frequently involve minor tweaks to essential elements of comparable messages. The objective is to build controlled experiments and use them to collect empirical data, which will then be used to design more successful communications in the future.

During A/B testing, adhere to single variables like a scientist. Knowing that a single email with a lot of flashing adverts performs better than a one-line plaintext email doesn't provide a lot of meaningful, repeatable information.

Many email marketing platforms will automate A/B testing for you, but if yours doesn't, setting up a test on your own is quite simple say the experts from Digital Marketing Jacksonville. To begin, compile an email list of prospects who will be contacted. Create two emails with only one major difference. Then, randomly divide the email list into two equal groups – this must be random to avoid accidentally biassing your results by splitting groups based on demographic characteristics. Finally, send out the emails and track which ones perform best.

With each following campaign, continue to test and refine. In the age of the internet, moods and tastes change quickly, and strategies that work one month might not work the next.

How to Conduct an Effective A/B Test?

To create and run A/B tests that give trustworthy, relevant data, follow these simple steps:

1. Determine the issue to be resolved

Do you have a low open rate on your emails? Low conversion rates? High turnover? Before you do anything else, decide which metric you want to enhance. You'll be able to assess the success of your experiments in this manner.

2. Think about possible variables

Different techniques are required for different challenges exclaims the Internet Marketing experts. Consider various email subject line tactics, the time of delivery, or the identity of the person sending the email if you want to enhance your open rates. In our own A/B tests, we've tried numerous different "From" fields.

Change aspects within the emails, such as the layout or the call to action, to alter click-through rates. Consider the things that impact your audience's decisions by putting yourself in their shoes.

Here are some examples of factors you might want to test:

• Content and structure of the subject line
• Time for delivery
• Date of delivery
• Name of the sender of the email
• Button style
• Text for buttons
• Newsletter design
• Personalization
• Text for the headline
• Body copy
• Image dimensions, positioning, and content

3. Make testing a top priority

If you're having trouble with both open and click-through rates, start with the one that will have the most impact right away. If only one person opens your emails, even a 100% click-through rate is nothing. Choose the variable with the most potential, and then build your test around it.

4. Establish success criteria

Better open rates are desirable, but "better" is not a scientific term. Create benchmarks and forecasts for what will make this test successful. If you don't already have internal benchmarks in place, MailChimp offers a comprehensive list of email statistics to get you started.

5. Measure, refine, and test again

There is no single test that can tell you which strategy to pursue the duration of your business's existence. Run your A/B test for a certain amount of time, then assess and act on the findings before running another test to keep pushing your KPIs.

Quick Tips for Creating Effective A/B Tests

Still not sure how to conduct an effective A/B test? To make the procedure run more smoothly, follow these brief tips:

• Maintain a clean email list. To avoid sending gray mail and increase test accuracy, scrub at regular intervals.
• Only test one variable at a time, and keep in mind that time is a consideration to consider. If you're testing the color of a button, don't send A emails in the morning and B emails in the afternoon because you won't know if the results are due to the time of the email or the color of the button.
• For reliable findings, use the largest sample size possible.
• Listen to the data, not what you think the data should say.
• Test frequently and early.

Conclusion

Your fantastic material needs an equally fantastic distribution plan according to the experts from the Digital Marketing Agency Jacksonville. Don't let stale email marketing limit your expansion. Master the technique of A/B testing to lay the groundwork for long-term success.