Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Four Ideas to Test Your EMails To Greater Success
Posted by 
on Thursday, March 10, 2011 
at 7:46 AM 
in 
With one statistic showing that 94% of online adults use email, it certainly may be wise for your company to continue using that channel in your marketing mix.
However, one of the biggest challenges that marketers face is how to get their target audience to pay attention to their emails.
One of the best ways to improve the success of your efforts (whether you’re measuring by open rates, click-throughs, or a further conversion) is to test and try variations of your content and design.
Here are 4 things that you could try testing in your email program today:
- Subject Line: If you are sending out a newsletter, then you have a prime candidate to try a test with. Measure the effectiveness of an email that simply says “[Company Name Here]‘s Newsletter” versus a Subject Line that describes what is in the article (i.e. “News For You: Direct Marketing Case Study, SEO Tips, and More”).
- FROM Name: The Display Name that people see in the FROM can play an important role in their decision-making process as to whether to open and take action on an email. Are they familiar with the name? Do they associate that name with an unsolicited sales pitch or with someone that’s helped them in the past? Try running a test where you send the email out from the name of someone on your staff (perhaps the CEO, VP of Sales, a Product Manager, etc) and then measure that against what happens when the FROM displays the name of your company.
- Image Buttons vs. Text Links: Getting someone to open the email might be the first step. But from there, you need them to take action. Try testing an email that primarily includes text links versus one that incorporates graphical buttons in the call-to-action.
- The Wording of Your Offer: What would better on your audience: “Try our brand-new product today!” or “Improve Your Business: Get Started with [Product Name Here]“? Run a variation of the key words in your offer and then measure to see what drives the highest number of clicks and conversions.
Tags Three Ideas for A/B Testing
Which one would you choose? 
When it comes to selling and providing marketing solutions to clients, one of the biggest things that a service provider can do is help their customer analyze data from a campaign. The goal in doing that, of course, is to find ways to make the next marketing effort even better (and hopefully the service provider earns that business too!).
One way to help your client execute the “best campaign possible” is to perform A/B Testing on their marketing efforts.
A/B Testing typically involves putting in an extra effort to execute a campaign. Thus, some companies may shy away from it. Or, they may think that telling the client that they want to “test” implies that they are not experts. This is far from the truth. In the worlds of marketing and communications, things are always changing. There’s always a way to get better.
If you are looking to improve marketing efforts for yourself or for a client, here are 3 ideas for A/B Tests that you could run:
Subject Lines
This one can be fairly simple to execute, but it’s not done very often. You might have valuable content in the Body of your eNewsletter. But if people don’t open the email after reading the Subject Line, everyone is missing out.
Here’s an idea: Divide your list into two groups.
Send the first half the newsletter with a Subject Line such as “[CompanyName's] Newsletter”.
Then, send the 2nd half the newsletter with a Subject Line that includes topics from the Body of the email. For example, if the articles in your newsletter discuss QR Codes, customer service, and best practices for putting on a webinar, the subject line might be “QR Codes, Customer Service, Best Practices for a Webinar and More”.
After sending out the email, you should then check your reports to see if one Subject Line earned more Opens and Click-throughs than the other.
To Personalize or Not
There are very few people that would discount the effectiveness of one-to-one marketing, but not all attempts at personalization are created equal.
You could try splitting your list into multiple groups, and then delivering a heavily personalized introduction to one group, and then a very general introduction to another.
Another thing to try might be putting a personalized URL on a direct mail piece to one group, and a general URL to another. At the end of the campaign, your reports should tell you if more people responded to one setup vs. the other.
The Giveaway
Every company wants leads. However, what’s really important is receiving qualified leads. People that truly care about our products or services.
On the other hand, we cannot succeed with an empty marketing database! So, from time-to-time, giving away something in exchange for a response may be an effective technique.
You could run an A/B Test to see what works on your target audience. I know of a paving company that pushed out a direct mail piece. They split their list into 3 groups.
- One group received a direct mailer that contained an offer for a gift card to an ice-cream shop.
- The 2nd group receive a direct mailer that contained an offer for a DVD and informational kit on the paving company’s products
- The 3rd group received a direct mailer that contained no special offer whatsoever.
Guess who won? Well, in their case, more people replied from the the DVD and info kit group.
Are you curious as to how your target audience will respond? There’s only one way to find out…. Start testing!
P.S. Smashing Magazine has an excellent post on the subject of A/B Testing as well. If you are looking for some more ideas, please feel free to check it out >>
A/B Email Subject Line Test Results : 2009 NAQP
We tested 3 different Subject Lines for one of the emails that was sent to promote our appearance at the 2009 NAQP Owners Conference in Austin, Texas.
In the chart, we display which Subject Line was responsible for the most “opens” of our emails.
A/B Email Subject Line Test Results: 2009 NAQP
A/B Testing Results for MFSA Conference
This week, we will be exhibiting and presenting at the MFSA Fulfillment Conference in Tampa.
One of the channels we used to promote our appearance was sending an email to the list of people we had for this conference.
As a marketing software company, we are always looking for ways to use our own technology to the fullest. Thus, for this campaign, we tried doing a simple A/B test.
Here is what we did for the test
- We split the list into two groups, directly in half. The total list size was 622. We sorted it alphabetically and saved the first 311 to one list, and the remaining 311 to another list.
- Everyone received the exact same email, in regards to the BODY text and the FROM. (The content covered our booth, as well as the fact that we were giving a presentation on the topic of using Social media to build one’s fulfillment business.)
- Everyone was sent the email at the exact same time.
However, here was the one difference (thus, our test):
1/2 the group received the Subject line “Using Social Media to Build Business”. The other half received the Subject “interlinkONE at MFSA Fulfillment Conference”.
Here are the results!
57 people opened the one that had “Using Social Media to Build Business” as the subject
55 opened the one that had “interlinkONE at MFSA Fulfillment Conference” as the subject
Then, in regards to the people that opened the email:
14 went to the landing page via the “interlinkONE at MFSA Fulfillment Conference” email.
13 went to the landing page via the “Using Social Media to Build Business” email.
What did we learn
Well, when it comes to A/B testing, you certainly may have the intention to conclude the test with dramatic, definitive results. However, because these numbers were so close, I can’t honestly say that the results will have a major effect on the content of our future marketing efforts to these lists.
However, we will certainly be attending other conferences in the future, as well as giving presentations on marketing-related subjects. Thus, with a different list, the results may be more pronounced.
But here’s the bottom line — at least we know the results! If we hadn’t tried the A/B test, then that would have simply ended up an unfulfilled idea that was brought up in a marketing meeting.
However, thanks to technology, we were easily able to execute and measure this marketing campaign effort.
