How to Keep Your Website Emails out of the Spam Folders?
- Using email A/B testing, you’ll discover what actually works on your prospects and how to address them.01:06
- What elements should I A/B test first in my emails?
- Subject Line03:08
- From Name03:53
- Content04:18
Read the full episode transcript below:
00:29 David Blackmon: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of WP, the Podcast, brought to you by WP Gears. I’m David Blackmon.
00:36 Tim Strifler: And I’m Tim Strifler.
00:38 David Blackmon: Today, in Episode 501, we’re going to talk about email split testing. Sometimes referred to as A/B testing, as well. We’re going to talk about why it’s important and what you need to test. Well, it’s kind of a no-brainer in my mind, but I guess I’ll go ahead and say it. Why is it important to do split testing or A/B testing with email? And the bottom line is, is so you can see what is the most effective and so that you can increase conversions.
01:06 David Blackmon: Tim and I both have product businesses in WordPress. We sell plug-ins and themes for the Divi theme and WordPress as well, and we want to send out the most effective emails when we send out email blasts, whether it’s for content that our users are reading, or whether it’s sales promotional emails for something that’s going on in our company, and we want to find out what is working the best. So you need to do that through just testing, throwing things out there, seeing what works the best, seeing what gets … Open the most, click-through the most, and stuff and try to dial in and hone in.
01:47 David Blackmon: But the reason why you want to do it is to increase conversions.
01:52 Tim Strifler: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I want to make clear, too. Email, A/B testing, or split testing … It’s a functionality that is built in most of the e-com … Or, I’m sorry, most of the email marketing platforms, so Mailchimp, Get Response, Active Campaign, et cetera. So when we say that it’s something that you have to do within their tool, I’m not talking about where you send an email and then the next time you send an email you do something different, you kind of compare the results. It needs to be a true split-test to really be able to compare, and so the email marketing system when they do the split test, they’ll send … You’ll have, you know, basically your main, your A, and then you’ll have your B, your control, and then your variant, or whatever it’s called.
02:37 Tim Strifler: And then it’ll send, if you’re only testing two things, it’ll equally send out the same amount of emails for your A and then your B, and then it’s going to compare the results, so you can actually see. And the reason why you have to do it that way is, you know, I will sometimes test things and be like, “Oh, I tried this, and this seemed to do well, and I’m going to do it again.” And it’s like, “Well, that may not be why it did well.” And so you need to be able to have everything exactly the same, the same time it’s sent, the same this, the same that, and then you can compare one thing versus the other.
03:08 Tim Strifler: And so a couple things that you may want to test is subject line. Subject line is huge. Just like a headline of a blog article gets people to open it, it entices them to read the article, the subject line entices them to open the email, and so people are bombarded with marketing emails and it’s no secret that you have to have a good subject line that’s going to make them want to open that email. Now, we’re not talking about click-bait. You know, you have to deliver on whatever it is, but you can test out different things. You know, using emojis in your subject line or using the subscriber’s name to catch their attention, and so you can split-test subject lines with A/B testing within your email marketing platform.
03:53 Tim Strifler: Another really important one is the from name. If you have a personal brand, well, then, chances are you’re going to have to use your name, but you can test whether it’s your first name versus your first name and last name. For me, with Divi Life, I can test doing it from Divi Life or I can have it coming from me. Same thing with David. It can come from him or it can come from Divi Space or Grasp and Grow. And so you can test out those things and see what gets you the best results.
04:18 Tim Strifler: And then finally, most obvious is the content. Testing out, you know, if plain text is better than HTML with beautiful design and big buttons and stuff like that, you can test, you know, whether more images works better or less images. So there’s lots of different variations within the content itself that you can test, and so yeah, I mean, it’s definitely something you can get creative with and see what works the best. Obviously, you have to make sure you’re sending to enough people to where it’s, you get statistically … Is it statistically relevant results? Is that the right word?
04:59 Tim Strifler: Within the A/B testing there’s a, yeah, that word is basically … You want to make sure it’s not just a coincidence. You have to have enough of a difference, and being sent to enough people to be statistically relevant. Otherwise, it’s just, you know, it happened to win this one. It’s just more of a coincidence than actually a true winner.
05:18 David Blackmon: Absolutely. Well, tomorrow, we’ve got another great topic, five signs it’s time to rebrand your company. Tim?
05:26 Tim Strifler: Until tomorrow.
05:27 David Blackmon: We’ll see you then.
05:28 Tim Strifler: Take care. Bye-bye.
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