Marketing gurus have already established that it is not possible to
maximize the results of your marketing campaigns. This is because
you never know which new and clever trick will bring an ever better
result than what has gone before. Email marketing, like any other
form of direct marketing, follows this essential rule.
However, it is possible to optimize your marketing campaign
results, meaning to measurably improve the results you are getting
now relative to the results you had in the past. This applies to all
forms of marketing, direct marketing, and advertising. The best way
to do this is to test different variations on the message, the
creative, the timing, and the frequency.
MESSAGE
For example, all marketing messages begin with a headline that
communicates an offer or benefit. "Learn more about solar power
heating for your home" and "Get a free solar powered radio with any
solar heating system" are both possible messages for a company that
sells solar equipment, but clearly are quite different in their
approach. And it¡¯s not just the big pitch, but also small subtle
variations on wording that can make a big difference. As Mark Twain
said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right
word is like the difference between lightning, and a lightning bug."
CREATIVE
The look and feel, color choices, design layout, and other
aesthetics are the creative elements for an email marketing
campaign. Should a specific campaign be bright and edgy, or sober
and business-minded? Should you use mostly pictures, or lots of
text? Managers responsible for bottom-line business activities tend
to respond to text and interactive emails from people they know and
trust. On the other hand, managers responsible for more creative
activities (i.e. marketing, advertising, design) and consumers
respond best to highly creative email campaigns.
TIMING
The time of day or day of week can have a big impact on the results
for your email marketing campaigns. So is Tuesday afternoon or
Thursday morning better for your particular offer? You can only find
out by testing. Please read our article "Timing Is Everything: When
and How Often To Use Email Marketing For Best Results" for a more
detailed discussion of this topic.
FREQUENCY
How often and how many times that you make contact, can
significantly influence the results of your email marketing
campaigns. Should you send once a week for three weeks, or every two
weeks? Only testing can tell. Typically, rules of direct marketing
show that "hitting" your target audience multiple times will ensure
a higher response rate. The "Timing Is Everything" article also
talks about the topic of frequency for your email campaigns.
Preparing To Test
One of the most powerful marketing testing techniques is the concept
of the "split run". The idea is a very simple one that dates from
long before the Internet. Basically, you segment your list into
multiple groups, and then try different variations on each group.
Once you determine which variation draws the better response, you
can improve your results by incorporating these "lessons learned"
into future campaigns.
Segmenting Your Lists
Marketers who have large enough lists can split off 10-20% of the
total addresses to use just for testing. Whatever yields the best
results will be used on the remaining 80-90% of the list. Those with
smaller lists will have to do testing on the full list, and may not
get to test as many variations. The more factors that you want to
test, the more complex it becomes to segment your list, while
avoiding sending to the same person twice, or to recipients that
have opted off of your list at some point during the testing.
For example, let¡¯s say we want to test three different factors
within a single mailing: creative "A" and "B", message "F" and "G",
and timing "X" and "Y". We would need to first divide the list into
"A" and "B" groups. Then divide the "A" group into "AF" and "AG"
groups, and the "B" group into "BF" and "BG" groups. Lastly, we
would need to divide the "AF" group into the "AFX" and "AFY" groups,
the "AG" group into the "AGX" and "AGY" groups, the "BF" group into
the "BFX" and "BFY" groups, and the "BG" group into the "BGX" and
"BGY" groups (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Whew! These three letter designated groups are the ones that we
are going to use for our testing.
Interpreting The Results
Determining which variation performed better is simply a matter of
comparing all of the sibling test group results with each other. In
the example above, how did "AFX", "AFY", "AGX", "AGY", "BFX", "BFY",
"BGX", and "BGY" compare to each other in number of opens? How about
click-thrus? Make sure that you have a large enough sampling of
recipients that have been exposed to each variation or you may not
be able to draw solid conclusions about how effective your campaign
has been. Remember, you can test factors for a single mailing as
well as testing factors over multiple mailings.
Conclusion
Only once you have started to measure the effectiveness of your
email marketing campaigns, can you begin to optimize the results.
Split testing can help you get information much more quickly. When
you test and analyze the results you can determine what is working
well, or not, and use that information to improve your bottom line.
