A Guide to Email A/B Testing

The most successful marketing emails are created with clear goals in mind and with the target audience at the forefront of all plans.

Email A/B testing is one of the best ways to determine what resonates the most with your audience and what they are interested in. It allows you to collect data that will tell you more about how effective your email marketing campaigns really are.

What is A/B Testing in Email Marketing?

A/B testing is a method that allows you to scientifically test how effective your email marketing really is. With A/B testing, you create two versions, known as variants, of an email to determine which one performs better statistically. This allows you to collect data on the best-performing email variant, which can then be applied to current and future email marketing campaigns.

What is Split Testing in Email Marketing?

Split testing in email marketing is just another name for A/B testing. It allows you to identify which emails are going to engage your subscribers best, allowing you to ultimately find ways to increase conversions and revenue.

Why Do You Need Email A/B Testing?

A/B testing or split testing is an effective method of finding out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to email marketing. It takes away the guesswork of assuming that your customers would prefer one kind of email over another. The more you perform A/B tests, the more information you will have for future emails. While testing once or testing occasionally can help you gather information to expand your email marketing knowledge and make more effective decisions, regular testing is an important part of any successful email marketing strategy.

How To Set Email A/B Testing Goals?

Like with anything in digital marketing, it’s important to have a clear goal and purpose when performing split testing. While you will get useful results from a quick email A/B test, having a precise testing strategy to stick to will be the best way to get the most powerful data and the best results.
Email A/B or split testing is a great tool to use at any time but can be particularly useful if you want to gain more insight into a new email format or campaign. Before beginning the A/B testing process, it’s important to first establish what you are testing, and why you are testing it.

What Should A/B Test Email Be Used For?

In some cases, it can be tricky to determine which variable test will be the best for helping you improve key metrics. From design principles to subject line strategies, there are various components that are included in a successful email. Understanding all the key performance indicators (KPIs) for your emails and the email components that impact them will help you determine what should be tested. Some common variables to test include:

Open Rate

The percentage of customers who opened your email. You can calculate this by dividing the number of unique email options by the number of delivered emails. If you are concerned about low open rates, test your subject line or preheader. Subject lines are especially important as they are the first things that people see when an email reaches their inbox. The better your subject line, the more likely subscribers are to open the email and read through.

Click Through to Open Rate

This is the percentage of unique clicks in an email divided by the unique open percentage. If you have a low click-through to open rate, or if you want to improve an email that is already performing well, there are several elements within the email body to consider A/B testing. Testing the content is a good place to start since engaging and eye-catching content will keep subscribers interested throughout the email. Consider the interactive content, contests, or information gaps that could boost engagement. Some of the main variables to consider testing include anchor texts, calls to action, bold imagery, spacing, and personalization.

Unsubscribe Rate

This refers to the percentage of customers that unsubscribe from receiving future emails from you. You can use A/B testing to determine why this is. Email frequency and relevancy are two of the main variables to test since these are the biggest reasons why subscribers opt-out.

Best Practices for A/B Testing in Email Marketing and Campaign Testing

While email A/B testing sounds rather straightforward, like any kind of experiment, you need to solidify the details and make sure that your test is valid. Some best practices to keep in mind include:

Identify Each Variable

Make sure that your tests are a priority and that split tests are run for the most frequently sent and important emails first. It’s important to know what you want to fix in terms of your emails before tests are run.

Test One Element at a Time

Always stick to testing one change at a time. To do this, have a control email that remains the same and a variant with one change, such as a different subject line, a different color button for your call to action, or a different offer. Testing multiple variables at once can make it difficult to determine which one led to a different result.

Record Test Results

Keep records of the email A/B tests that you perform, the test results, and how you plan to implement what you found.

The Best Email Marketing A/B Testing Setup

Now that you understand the basics of A/B testing, here are the steps that you need to follow to successfully set a split test up.

Determine Your Goals

First, it’s important to clearly identify what your goals are for the campaign you want to test. This will be something that you refer back to often when figuring out the details of your testing process.

Establish Test Benchmarks

Once goals have been defined, look over your current email data and determine how successful previous email campaigns have been. You can then use these findings as benchmark numbers, which will be significant during the process of analyzing your test data to gauge success at an early stage. These numbers will also be useful in helping you determine which variables you want to test.

Build the Test

Once you have goals and benchmark data, it’s time to start building your test. Remember that it is important to only test one variable at a time. When building your test, you want the test sample size to be large enough to enable you to get an idea of how the rest of your subscribers are going to react without using the entire list, but small enough so that you can send the best-performing version to a large audience segment. Bear in mind that it is important to use a sample that will be representative of the entire list rather than a specific segment. How long to run the test will depend on your list size. With a large list, a simple email marketing campaign may be sufficient. The bottom line is to ensure that you receive enough clicks or opens, depending on your main goal, so the results are significant statistically. To determine whether or not your test is a winner or a loser, the test results should be at least 90% statistically significant.

How to Track and Measure A/B Testing Email Campaigns

With so many different elements that can be tested, you may be wondering what you can do to verify that the test provided you with useful data or was successful. To track and measure the success of the A/B testing that you run on your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to think back to your goals. Your original goals will tell you the metrics that you should be paying the most attention to along with anything that you need to work on improving such as the click rate, open rate, and delivery rate. It is also crucial that you can look at your metrics as a whole and see the bigger picture when it comes to how well or poorly an email performed. The ability to track this data and refer back to it will help you when it comes to optimizing your future email campaigns.

A/B testing is a very useful tool that will help you determine how well your email marketing campaigns are performing.