| Email Newsletters: Test, Test and Test Some More
Testing your email campaigns is another important part of email marketing. All too often people are pleased with throwing together an email newsletter the same way over and over and appealing to the same people every time, all the while they could be missing a huge portion of their audience. How do you appeal to these people? Just like anything else in email marketing the answer is…it depends. Audience groups will respond differently to different subject lines, special offers, time of day the email is sent and so on. To fix this problem, the only thing you can do as an email marketer is to test your emails in a number of different ways. The following is a list of factors that should be tested to narrow down your audience so that you can target them more effectively.
Time and Day: One of the most argued upon points in email marketing is when the best time to send an email is. This is different for every audience group and for the different types of emails you’re sending out. For example a restaurant newsletter sent on a Monday or Tuesday may include the weekday lunch specials, while one sent later in the week may include a reminder for upcoming live music in house for the weekend. Depending on the type of email you send can really make the difference on when the best time to deliver your newsletter is. The only way to know for sure for your specific audience is to test.
Layout: Experiment with pictures, designs, fonts, colors, etc… Anything to make people remember your newsletter while at the same time not losing the branding elements of your business.
Subject Line: This is one of the easiest and one of the most effective tests you can perform. Try short subject lines, longer descriptive ones, personalized subject lines etc… One thing to remember while testing subject lines is to not make your subject line look like SPAM with all caps, or symbols.
Personalization: One way to increase opens on your emails is to include a personalized touch, such as “Hello [First Name], here’s a special offer just for you from ABC company”. Experiment with using people’s name, and making it appear as if you are directing the email primarily to them instead of to a large audience.
The “From” line: try using your business name, the owner’s name, or a well known person in your company to make the recipient familiar with who the email is from. The more familiar they are with who the email is from the better the chances are that they will see what you have to offer.
Links and Call’s to Action: Make sure that in your testing you include links to landing pages on your website, and images such as a “Buy Now” button or a “Contact Us” link that encourages readers to move on towards purchasing your product, or learning more about it.
This list is only a few of the many things that can be tested in your email marketing campaigns. Remember when testing, that it’s important to test just one thing at a time so that the results are easy to interpret. Good luck and keep on testing. | 
08-01-2008, 02:29 PM
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