A/B Testing for Email Optimization

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is A/B testing?

It is vital to quality control and preview your email campaigns before deployment to resolve any potential issues with delivery and rendering. In addition, you should test different aspects of campaigns for response optimization. 

A/B testing is when we run a test to see which variables in our emails work better. This involves:

• Creating two or more emails
• Changing one aspect (or variable) of the email
• Seeing which variation works best

A/B testing is usually provided in your email or marketing automation tool, so check your setup to see how you can test and drive better performance using data.

Best practices for A/B testing

Here are best practices to follow for A/B testing:

• Test early: Test early in your campaign to a small segment of your total list. If you have a clear winner of your test, such as the subject line, you can then deploy it to the remainder of your list. 
• Test one element at a time: Only test one element at a time.
• Create only two variations of the tested element: Test only the A version and the B version.
• Trust the data you get, rather than your gut: Trust the test results rather than your gut. Personal bias can interfere. 
• Establish statistical significance: Set metric benchmarks to decide which data and trends resulted in a meaningful difference that can be attributed to the changes you made.

A/B testing your emails

So why would a marketer use A/B testing to optimize emails? Here are some key reasons:

• To identify key metrics for better opens and clicks
• To determine the best subject line
• To ensure your emails resonate better with your audience
• To determine which segments respond best to different content, leading to more tailored campaigns
• To drive more sales and higher conversion rates

Because A/B testing is easy and fast to implement, it's highly effective at identifying exactly what drives opens and clicks. For example, with A/B testing, you can determine:

• The best subject line for a given campaign
• Which of two target audience segments engages with you more often
• The best welcome campaign offer to motivate a first purchase
• The aspects of email layout and design that work best

You can also test elements like from name, a CTA, copy or text and headings within your email message design, HTML versus plain text email, personalization, and many more.