A/B Testing - Where to start?

Compared to our other Tips, this will be more of the "short and sweet."

In our last Tip, we discussed subject lines, which included some discussion about A/B testing. Because of the questions/comments we received, we wanted to review A/B testing and expand on it a bit.

To do A/B testing is not a difficult process, but it does take work, time, and some evaluation, which is why many "smaller" companies don't do it. A/B testing is a good place to start in the "world of testing," and if you are able to do it, it will create a great upside to the results of your email campaigns, especially when you consider that email marketing generated $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, which is double the ROI of #2 - search marketing (per DMA).

Subject lines are a great place to begin A/B testing, once you've developed one or two strong subject lines using our best practice guidelines (our last Tip), test your headlines for even greater response. When you increase clicks even 1%, depending on your list size, you can add substantial revenue to your bottom line.

A/B subject line split testing is one of the smartest and easiest techniques marketers can use to accelerate response. Because email marketing is instantaneous, unlike traditional postal mail, you gain the added advantage of receiving statistically valid results within just a few hours.

To split test your campaign, extract 20 percent of your list as a test group. Then split this sub-group into two: Group A and Group B. Send a test campaign using two unique subject lines to each group. Then, within just three hours, you should have enough data compiled to analyze results and determine which headline reaped the greatest response. While this practice works best with large lists of more than 1,000 recipients, you should still acquire worthwhile feedback with smaller lists.

When marketers test and tune their email subject lines, they improve response 41.4 percent on average. Cactus Sky provides powerful, real-time analytic reports and data mining tools to make testing easy and automated. Reports are immediately available, so you can change your subject line, body content, layout or design on the fly. Cactus Sky team members also see exactly who opened and read their promotion - and which links they clicked within the body copy. The extra time you devote to testing and fine-tuning can help you increase reader satisfaction and loyalty.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or click here, and we'll contact you.

Cactus Sky Communications
941.907.4132
info@cactusskyemail.com
www.cactussky.com