7 Rules to Follow for Email A/B Testing Done Right

The smallest changes in email design, copywriting, or incentives can make a major difference in the performance of a campaign. A different button color, subject line, or send time could determine whether your email is a success or a flop.

Plus, what works for one list of contacts may not resonate with another. Certain segments of subscribers could respond quite differently than others.

This is why it’s critical to test, test, and test your emails some more by split-testing your content, incentives, and send time. In order to run A/B tests that yield repeatable, statistically significant test results, you’ll need to adopt a systematic approach. When done correctly, your A/B tests yield results that’ll actually improve your digital marketing strategy in the long run.

We know this sounds like a lot, so we’ve put together some guidelines to help you get started. In this article, we’ll go over what A/B tests are, what elements you can test, and leave you with seven rules to follow once you start testing.

What is an A/B test?

A/B testing (or “split testing”) is a simple way to test:

(Version A) The current design of your web page, email marketing campaign, or ad

against

(Version B) Changes to your current design.

This is done to see which design will produce the most positive results. You’ll use specific email marketing metrics to define a winner. That will depend on the goal of your email. Which version, A or B, drove more opens, clicks, conversions, downloads, or sales?

A/B testing is a crucial part of the. A simple tweak in your email campaign or landing page could significantly increase your effectiveness.

Here’s an email A/B test example from our friends at . They wanted to know  Myanmar Business Email List if their subscribers would respond better to a plain text email promoting a white paper or an HTML email with more design elements.

Results were inconclusive on this test, meaning there wasn’t a large enough statistical difference between Version A and Version B. That happens now and then with A/B testing. Don’t worry about it. It either means that what you’re testing doesn’t really matter as much as you thought, or it could mean the changes you tested weren’t noticeable enough.

B2B Email List

What email elements can I A/B test?

Ready to get started? Let’s go over six

  1. Subject lines
  2. Preview text
  3. Sender (“From”) name
  4. Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
  5. Images
  6. Personalization

Let’s dive into each of these below.

1. Subject lines

The inbox is a crowded place, and  is your first chance to grab a subsriber’s attention. You might think your subject line is clever and compelling. But what do your customers and subscribers UAE Cell Number think? Use A/B testing to try out different subject lines and see if you can find the best fit for your mailing list.

For example, this particular sender decided to A/B test two different ideas, including one that uses an .

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