Test This, Not That: Email Campaign Testing Beyond the Subject Line

I’m sure you’ve read it before: employing testing as an optimization tactic has been proven to be an extremely efficient means of increasing email marketing performance. What you may not have read is that the most widely used testing strategies are not always the most effective.

A visit to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report gave us a sampling of what testing elements proved to have the highest rate of effectiveness.

Test this: Landing Page used 32% of the time, 41% effective.
Not that: Email Template Layout and images used 50% of the time, only 26% effective.

Test this: Target audience used 30% of the time, 42% effective.
Not that: Message Content used 61% of the time, only 25% effective.

Test this: Call to Action used 50% of the time, 34% effective.
Not that: Day of Week Sent used 39% of the time, only 21% effective.

Test this: Personalization used 34% of the time, 32% effective.
Not that: From Line used 29% of the time, only 29% effective.

Test this: Subject Line used 72% of the time, 35% effective.
Not that: Time of Day Sent used 39% of the time, only 22% effective.

Make the most of your time and resources; test some of these more effective elements the next time you launch an email marketing campaign. For more insight on useful marketing tactics read MarketingSherpa’s handbooks and reports.