Maximizing Your Email Marketing with A/B Testing

Though first gaining widespread popularity 20 years ago, email hasn’t changed a whole lot. The same can be said about the challenge for email marketers: You must still be able to get your message to the right person, at the right time in a unique and interesting way, all with the hope that it will drive traffic to your site and increase engagement with your product or service.

部t consumers are a skeptical lot. Consider how many times you’ve deleted a mailing list email from your inbox. How much of it did you read? Was the content compelling? Was anything about it interesting? Did you even get past the subject line?

While a few are predicting the death of email in favor of other channels such as social media, the reality isemail is growing 7 percent each year. And asYory Wurmser of the Direct Marketing Association recently said, “Although email is still a vibrant channel, consumers — especially younger ones — use it more selectively, and marketers need to adjust accordingly.”

Email remains the most effective and direct way to connect with your customers and prospects, but its content must be more compelling than ever. It must reach the right subscriber with the right message at the right time. If you’re able to do that effectively, your efforts will have a clear and distinct increase in your overall open rates as well as click-through rates (CTR). But what’s the best way to get insight into which audience you should send which message to and when?

每个人都知道比较购物，但是比较营销呢？可以通过称为A/B测试的方法获得快速，准确的答案。这种方法涉及在整体受众的较小段中测试不同版本的消息传递，并从所选变量中选择一个赢家。然后，表现最好的人将被发送给您的目标受众的大部分。

A/B测试可以像发送不同的页面格式（例如，长距离相对于短），不同的图像大小（或根本没有图像）或使用两个不同的头条和文本样式（例如子弹与段落）一样简单。有效使用时，A/B测试是哪些消息最有可能与最大的目标受众产生最多的潜在客户和点击的关键性能指标。但是要运行成功的A/B测试，您首先必须设置正确的参数并定义要达到的结果。

以下是有效A/B测试的一些好步骤：

• Set your hypothesis via the scientific method.For example, “Does a smiling face in a photo increase CTR on that page?” This will set the parameters of the test and provide a quantifiable metric — in this case, clicks — on which you can base your success.

• 知道您的样本量。Before anything else, you need to determine the percentage of your target group you want to reach with the A/B test. Should it be a large chunk or a smaller, more segmented list? This will ensure you get a reliable, valid result.

• Keep one variable.因为我们只是在测试笑脸对CTR的影响，所以其他所有内容都必须保持不变 - 包括复制，格式化，主题行，甚至发送时间。更改其他任何内容都会破坏测试的目标。

• Set your success metric.在该测试中,我们设置指标“点击”。部t you can realistically use any metric that’s based on the result you want to achieve, i.e., conversion rate, trial downloads, etc. This is especially important because a common mistake in A/B testing is looking at multiple success metrics after the test has ended and then deciding which is the most significant.

• Determine split-group sizes.如果您的变量在过去的性能很好（开放率很高），则可以将其发送到您的测试组的较大部分（75/25，甚至高达90/10）。如果您在没有过去的表现不佳的情况下开始测试，请将测试版本发送到50/50分差。

• Like any other best practice, use common sense.仅使用您认为会对性能产生强大影响的变量，而不仅仅是边际改进。并非每个变量都需要进行测试，但与此同时，不要忽略可能带来巨大好处的变量。

• 记录一切。Keeping a written record of the test you perform can save colleagues from performing the same test in the future. Publishing a blog post can also be a good method of sharing your findings with colleagues and educating your successors.

通过A/B测试，您可以显着加强您的email marketingefforts for higher CTR and more conversions. Compare and see.