Why AREN’T you testing your emails?
Filed under: Agency, Analytics, Education and Training, Email Marketing, In-House, Non-Profits on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 by Serengeti Communications
A recent Marketing Sherpa article delivered some really interesting email link test results that improved click performance significantly.Within their own list, they isolated and tested some link language to see which would have a better click through rate:
- Click to continue
- Continue to article
- Read more
In this case the ‘click to continue’ link peformed much better than the other two. Not really a suprise to me because I have tested calls-to-action frequently and found that you have to be very direct in your link language to get any sort of responses. (you may have a hard time getting away from the less-is-more “read more” language argument though)
I’m a strong believer in testing email since it’s easy and provides almost instant gratification/results. But, i’m a geeky data-head that thrives on proving my email theories with intense testing.
If you haven’t already, you should create an email test plan to start increasing your email performance.
There are many schools of thought when it comes to creating an email test plan. What to test, when to test, when to re-test, etc. Should you test to your entire list and risk interrupting a normal communication stream or do you isolate a portion of your
email list by segment? (That is IF you have a normal communication stream AND are able to segment your list, but that is another entry for another day…)
Don’t be afraid to test. BUT don’t rely too heavily on creating a ‘control’ as the industry and technologies chage, so will the way people interact with email communications. Be ready to change your strategy quarterly. Luckily the email environent will allow you to test to your controls on a regular basis.
Roger Craver and Tom Belford over at www.theAgitator.net also
weigh in on this topic - you should be reading their posts just as frequently as Marketing Sherpa for additional thought leadership.
[...] Recently I have discussed topics ranging from email frequency, sender name, personalization, and testing practices. Each of these topics were spun-off a blog entry discussing ‘industry best practices’ [...]
↓ Quote | Posted September 25, 2007, 10:48 am