Boost Your Email Campaigns: A/B Testing Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses
In the competitive world of ecommerce, standing out amongst the noise that your customers and prospects hear in the form of hundreds (if not thousands!) of marketing messages per day can be a real challenge.
For small businesses looking to maximise the return on their email marketing efforts, A/B testing is a no brainer! By embracing A/B testing, even early on in your email marketing journey, small businesses can significantly enhance their email marketing performance, driving engagement, conversions, and overall growth using data driven strategies.
So, what is A/B testing?
A/B testing is also known as split testing, and involves comparing two variations of a component of an email to see which one performs better. This testing tool enables you to experiment with different elements of your email campaigns or automations to determine which versions yield the best results.
The Importance of A/B Testing
Utilising this testing method in your emails is crucial for a number of reasons:
Improved Engagement: By testing different elements such as send times, subject lines, or calls to action (CTAs), you can identify the combinations that resonate most with your audience, leading to higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversions - which is the whole point of why we are sending emails to begin with!
Data-Driven Decisions: Rather than relying on assumptions or guesswork, A/B testing provides concrete data on what works and what doesn't for your customer. This leads to more informed decisions and allows you to customise your approach based on what works for YOUR customer (not someone else’s!)
Customer Growth: The insights you are able to gain from ongoing A/B testing help in continuously refining and improving your email marketing campaigns and flows, leading to sustained growth over time in not only your email channel, but your overall business performance.
How to A/B Test
Implementing A/B testing in your ongoing email marketing strategy involves a few simple steps:
Identify Your Goal or Hypothesis: Determine what it is that you want to achieve through your A/B test. Examples of goals could be: increasing open or click-through rates, or improving placed order or conversion rates. Having a clear goal will help you to determine the type of A/B test to run.
Choose a Variable to Test: It’s best to select one element of your email to test at a time. This could be the subject line, preview text, images, CTAs, or send times or days. Testing one variable at a time ensures that you can attribute any changes in performance to that specific element, rather than being confused when testing too many things at once.
Create Variations: Develop two versions of your email through your email marketing platform such as Klaviyo, Mailchimp or whichever ESP you currently use. There will generally be an option to do this through the creation of your campaign. You want to ONLY change the variable you are testing and keep everything else the same.
Run the Test: Send the two versions of your email to the splits of your audience. When you first start out, we recommend sending 50% to Version A and 50% to Version B to achieve statistically significant results. Over time, you can then start playing around with the winning combination split tests where your email provider will test a smaller sample size (determined by you) and then send the remaining emails to the winning version.
Analyse the Results: After the test is complete (wait about a week), compare the performance of the two versions based on your goal. Look at metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, depending on what your test was, to determine the winning version. Your email provider may tell you which version was the winner! If you don’t find any conclusive results, run the test again on a future campaign. It’s best to run each test a few times to solidify the results.
Implement the Findings: Apply the insights gained from your A/B test/s to your future email marketing campaigns and automations. Every test you run is data gained on your subscribers and over time you will start to form a really insightful picture into what works and what doesn’t!
A/B Testing Ideas and Suggestions for Small Businesses
The possibilities for A/B testing in email marketing are endless! Here are a few ideas and suggestions to get you started:
Subject Lines: Test different subject lines to see which ones generate higher open rates. Consider experimenting with length, emojis, tone (formal vs. informal), personalisation (using the recipient's first name), and urgency (for example “limited time offer" or “4 hours left”).
Preview (also known as preheader) text: Often overlooked, preview text can influence open rates. Test different preview text variations to see which ones complement your subject lines best and increase open rates of the email.
Send Times: The timing your emails arriving in a subscribers inbox can hugely affect the performance! Test different send times (e.g. morning vs. evening) and days (e.g. Thursday vs Sunday) to determine the what works best for your audience. This greatly varies by brand, the product you are selling, and whether you are marketing to businesses or the end consumer.
Call to Action (CTA): CTAs are crucial for driving conversions. Test different phrasing (e.g. "SHOP NOW" vs. "SHOP PRODUCT NAME"), the button colours, sizes, and placements of your CTAs to see which version encourages the highest clicks.
Content length and format: Experiment with the length of your email content by testing shorter, more concise emails against longer ones including more content to see which format your audience prefers. You can also test different content formats, such as text only emails vs more image based emails. Just don’t forget to include some text in your image based emails as your deliverability will suffer otherwise!
Personalisation: Test the impact of personalised content or subject lines, such as including the recipient's first name, location, or past purchase behaviour to see what drives the higher engagement and conversions.
Email Design and User Experience : The overall design and layout of your emails can greatly affect readability and engagement. Test different templates, colour schemes, and ordering of content to find the most user friendly version for your audience.
Promotional Offers: Test different types of promos and offers, such as discounts, free shipping, or exclusive content, to see which ones drive the most conversions.
In Summary:
A/B testing is a crucial component of a successful email marketing strategy, especially for small businesses looking to grow not only their email channel but their overall business! By testing and optimising different elements of your emails, you are able to enhance engagement, drive more conversions and achieve your email marketing goals more efficiently. Remember, the key to effective A/B testing is to test one variable at a time, test that hypothesis multiple times to solidify the outcome and implement your findings to continuously improve your email marketing campaigns.
For absolute beginners in email marketing, A/B testing might seem overwhelming, but the benefits far outweigh the initial effort. Once incorporated into your ongoing strategy, you’ll be well on your way to creating more impactful and successful email campaigns. Now you can watch your email channel and small business grow!
