Test, test, test. Testing should be the first line on any email marketing plan.

By: Andrew Stockwell | March 12th, 2009

Test test test and test some more, then when you’ve learnt what makes a positive impact on your email results start testing all over again!

We’ve all heard about the benefits of email testing many times before; so why are so many big brands not testing? Is it a lack of resources? A lack of ideas? Or is it just that optimisation is not viewed as a key strategic goal? It might be worth adding one reason is because email is so cheap people don’t bother as the ROI is normally good whilst on expensive media (e.g. print or paid search) you have to test to optimise, to justify spend.

When writing an email, strategy testing should be central to every initiative. We should celebrate successful tests as they allow us to make change for the better, but we should also celebrate unsuccessful tests as they show us where to re-focus our testing efforts next time. The beauty of testing is it’s a win win situation.

Whilst testing is an unlimited and open ended undertaking, I would recommend beginning in these key areas:-

Test your segmentation
Test your subject lines
Test copy
Test imagery
Test calls to action
Test timings

I’ll talk more in a future blog about success metrics, as these again should be part of all planning, but as it’s relevant here these should be considered before you define your tests. (i.e. What makes a success?) Are we trying to get more people to open the email? Or are we trying to drive more traffic to a particular page on the website? Write these down and plan how you are going to get there.

Another important element when planning tests is to put yourselves in the shoes of your recipients. What would you like to see? What would grab your attention? What would make you click through? Don’t look at it though your own eye’s (i.e. a marketer trying to sell more widgets as the CEO has told the company widgets are most important this week) instead think how a customer would engage with a widget. If a user has bought a widget before they are more likely to buy one again, so test a different creative with that customer. If a user has never bought a widget test a different set of propositions with that customer. This is a great example of Team GB’s Olympic medal winning concept “The aggregation of marginal gains”. If we can increase performance of each of these segments across the whole base through testing, the final overall increase can be significant and get us all promoted!

Coming up with new ideas is always an area where people struggle but this is normally because they reserve generating these ideas for the office and planning meetings on email. Personally I always recommend having a page in your daybook or a file on your iphone kept aside for new testing ideas as you never know where the best new ideas will come to you. Write them down and come back to them when you are planning.

As with many successes in this world when struggling for ideas – copy. Yes, look at your competition and see what they are doing and try it for yourself. If it works celebrate and of course test some more…

I’ll come back to testing again in future blogs. Any ideas welcome, so please send your thoughts to blog@redeye.com.

Andy Stockwell, Senior Account Director, RedEye