A/B Testing Creates Superior Email Campaigns February 26, 2021, | Posted by Guest

Testing is a cornerstone of email marketing. Savvy email marketers test everything, and often more than once. One method of testing, A/B testing, is a cornerstone of high performing email campaigns, and Site Impact does a lot of it. But what is it, and how does it work? We’ve written about A/B testing in depth, but today we’re just going to go over the basics. By incorporating more A/B testing into your development process, you’ll be able to improve your results consistently from one campaign to the next, and keep building on your successes. So let’s dive into the essentials.

What is A/B testing and how does it work?

A/B testing is a basic form of quality control and campaign development that most email marketing professionals incorporate into their process. Of course, it works across all marketing channels--it isn’t exclusive to email. At the most basic, it’s the process of testing one variable with two different options--an option A and an option B--to see which of those options gets the best results or more people prefer. In email, this is usually a variable such as subject line or some aspect of the creative. Because generally only one variable and two variations are tested at one time, it’s also called split testing. 

Using the example of a subject line, a split test or A/B test would involve choosing two subject lines and sending the email campaign they are supposed to go with out to a small group of recipients. The open rates for the two subject lines would be monitored to find out which one gets the better rate--therefore, which one is the stronger subject line. From there, the full campaign would go out with the stronger subject line. The process is similar for other aspects of a campaign, whether it’s copy, color scheme, or any other element of your email. The process doesn’t take much time, but of course there’s the risk that comes with testing every single element more than once; a lot of short periods of time do add up. 

Why does A/B testing improve email effectiveness?

Knowing how split testing or A/B testing works can give you a hint to why it helps to build stronger campaigns. By testing variables that can impact the different performance metrics for your email marketing campaigns, you build stronger campaigns over time. Repeated testing across several different campaigns will also help you to start noticing trends in your audience’s reactions, which leads to even stronger campaigns from one to the next. It also allows you to detect the beginning of trends that can indicate a changing audience or changing reactions to your emails. Overall, A/B testing helps boost your performance both on a single-campaign level and across multiple campaigns over time.

A/B testing is an important step that the best email marketing agencies and professionals take into account for every email they send. It doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming; a quick A/B test or split test on one or two variables will take you a long way towards increased performance in your email campaigns. Contact Site Impact to learn how we help all of our clients get the most out of email.