How To Do A/B Email Tests Properly
Doing your A/B email tests properly is often the deciding factor of whether you can continuously bring in new customers, especially as direct-to-consumer marketing is becoming a more prominent part of the digital economy. Regardless of how important good A/B email testing is, many businesses continue to view it as an opportunity to cut costs, which is a disastrous mistake that can seriously haunt you in the long-run.
Rather than throwing in the towel and saying that A/B email tests are too expensive or challenging, you should do your research and figure out how to do it properly. Here’s the right way to do A/B email tests.
How to get the most clicks
A/B email tests can be surprisingly simple to understand; in short, you’re comparing two differing methods for generating clicks/customer leads to see which is the most efficient. In the digital age, even the smallest amount of inefficiency can accrue over time to hold your company back as your competitors zoom past you and scoop up all the customers in your niche. That’s why it’s imperative that you take getting the most clicks possible seriously, as the right A/B email testing regime can tell your company what it’s doing right – and what it’s doing terribly wrong.
It’s important to establish upfront that A/B tests usually rely on small sample sizes; you don’t want to send your A/B tests out to too many customers because too large a sample size can be frustrating to work with. Furthermore, the subscribers you have only have a limited attention span, which means that the more emails they get from you the fewer they’re likely to ever click at all. It’s thus critical that you establish A/B testing as a means to test-run your marketing campaign on a tiny audience before rolling it out for the main body of consumers you’re trying to lure in.
One of the most important aspects of A/B testing when it comes to email elements is subject line testing; the subject line of an email is the first thing a prospective customer will see when they receive your pitch, so knowing what captures their attention and what causes their interest to fizzle out is imperative to success. Some subject line A/B testing can produce shocking results that are worth your time, as knowing what others have uncovered before testing for yourself can help save you time and money, especially if they’re in a niche related to yours.
Still, beginning with email elements isn’t always the best strategy. As a matter of fact, there are good reasons to believe that you should begin your A/B testing by focusing on general concepts and overall strategy rather than specifics like subject lines and the email’s body content.
See which strategy your audience responds to
By creating detailed buyer personas, you can see which strategy your audience responds to most favorable before embarking on the more complicated and expensive elements of A/B testing. The more you know about your potential leads, the greater a chance you have at hooking them into a sale later on down the line. Get to know your customers and appreciate behavioral psychology, and you’ll soon realize that strategy should always come before element testing. Knowing whether customers prefer landing pages versus direct links that allow them to buy via the email they receive, for instance, can help you cut down costs in the long-run.
After you’ve arrived at a general strategy you’re comfortable with, you can begin testing specific elements that can make or break your success. Having the right name attached to your HTML email builder is a great way to generate a consumer buzz, as users who encounter an unfamiliar or untrustworthy name in their inbox are less likely to click on your content out of fear of being scammed or hacked.
If you take a look at an interesting experiment conducted on email sender names, for instance, you’ll quickly realize that companies can generate impressive results for themselves even with seemingly-trivial research focused on the name of the sender. This is because customers are regular people at the end of the day, and regular people like to attach a friendly face and familiar name to others before entrusting them with their money.
Learn to avoid common mistakes
Finally, a major part of doing A/B testing properly is learning to avoid commonly made mistakes that tank most A/B testing efforts. Countless digital entrepreneurs have too much confidence in themselves, as they don’t understand that their subjective opinion doesn’t outweigh objective evidence. By reviewing what’s tanked other businesses as they went about A/B testing, you’ll avoid such costly mistakes while optimizing the efforts of yours that do end up producing useful results for your company.
Once you’ve arrived at a comprehensive understanding of the worst A/B testing mistakes to have plagued businesses in the past, your own company will be enjoying much smoother sailing than before. Often, the secret to getting something right the first time is simply to know what to avoid from the get-go, as much of the costs of A/B testing can be narrowed down to foolish mistakes and needles expenditure that could have been avoided with thorough market research ahead of time.
Remember that A/B testing isn’t a silver bullet, and that you need consumer research alongside of it to make it worthwhile. With the knowledge of how to conduct A/B tests properly, however, you’ll soon discover that you’re generating more leads by luring in new consumers at an unprecedented rate.