5 Easy Things to Test to Get a Better Response in Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Testing something new or changing something seemingly small in your email campaigns can definitely tell you something about how your recipients will respond. You'll either get more open & clicks or you won't. But you won't know until you try.

Testing something new can SEEM like a lot of work but it's really not. If you're going to create an email marketing campaign anyway, it's just three more tiny steps.

• One: Make a copy of the campaign you're creating
• Two: Change a little part of the campaign (see below)
• Three: Test with a small portion of your list or split your list in two

• These three simple steps could get you a better response to your next email campaign and it takes just minutes for you to do. Unleash the mad scientist in you with these 5 easy things to test within your next email marketing campaign.

  1. Subject Line - If no one opens your email, it doesn't matter how pretty it is on the inside, so why not test two different subject lines? Here's an idea; look at your past campaigns and see what your recipients are clicking on, then include that offer or article in your new subject line. After you send it out compare your open and click rates to see if you got a better response than normal.

  2. Offer - Test a % discount vs. a pricing discount like 20% off vs. a $10 savings. Run a test with free shipping vs. no free shipping or with an expiration date vs. no expiration date. Then roll out to the rest of your list the winning offer.

  3. Format - Instead of including a sidebar in your emails, try removing it so that perhaps more of your content is "above the fold" or the part of an email or web page that is visible without scrolling. Make sure you've got some links above the fold so you can tell if it's working. If you get more clicks you may want to consider changing your format for good.

  4. Links - If your email has 5 links to your offer, try including 5 more and see if your response increases. Read Are Your Clicks Happening Below The Fold?

  5. Images - Try removing images and see if a text version of your email works better. How 90's of you!

  You can either split your list in half and do the test or you can break off a small piece of your list and do the test a day in advance of your real email campaign date. Then roll out to your bigger list with the winner. Here is how you can do it using VerticalResponse.

  One last thing, if you are going to test any of these make sure you test them one at a time so you know which change actually made the difference.
  

  About the Author:
  Janine Popick is the CEO of the leading self-service email marketing company VerticalResponse. Take a FREE test drive of VerticalResponse and see how easy it is to create and send email campaigns in minutes, right from your browser.

  View Janine Popick : Articles • Profile • Website • Blog