Considerations When Split Testing Email Marketing Subject Lines
One of the classic – if not the most frequent – email marketing split tests is A/B testing the subject line. There are a lot of email marketing examples out there and today I will offer my take on this hot topic.
If you are not familiar with this, here is how it works in a nutshell. Many of the best email marketing service companies allow marketers to run a real-time split test where one can send out two versions of the same email with different subject lines.
Then after 3 or 4 hours or when enough data is computed, the email marketing service sends out the remaining subset the email with the winning subject line or highest engagement depending on what your needs are.
Pro Tip for Email Marketing Competitor Intelligence
Here’s a pro tip: if you want real email marketing examples and see the company’s you follow, be it for marketing inspiration or competitor intelligence, sign up multiple accounts with the same Gmail address and use a + sign after your email. Gmail views it as one email address, but most email marketing service providers will view it as multiple accounts.
So sign up as example+1@gmail.com and then example+2@gmail.com. After a while, you might see the same email come up in your inbox with different subject lines (or different times if they are testing time optimization techniques).
Getting Back to the Call to Action in Email Marketing: Choose Wisely
Now, when it comes to pointed email marketing campaigns with a sole call to action, then the process is simplified and I have a formula for the top-performing call to action techniques. You want to get more opens, which translates to more click-throughs, which in turn translate to more conversions and sales – or at least we hope.
However, even the best email marketing service cannot predict what will happen, but the best subject line should – in most cases – yield the best results, so choose your subject lines wisely. I’ve written about why higher open rates do not always equate to better email marketing campaigns and offered my take on split test optimization for email marketing, and today I want to look at other email marketing examples that will help you drive your email marketing efforts to new heights.
Email Marketing Examples for Newsletter Subject Lines
So here is another aspect of split testing subject lines: specifically email marketing newsletters.
Unlike a one-call-to-action email marketing campaign, email newsletters offer you the chance to serve up a potpourri of topics in an event to drive traffic to your website. You might be running these campaigns on a monthly or even weekly basis. And this is where things with the subject line can – and do – play with people’s minds and affect their decisions.
And it’s not just email marketers running split tests and driving traffic to specific landing pages. Restauranteers are known for driving diners to food choices that they have a surplus in (think today’s special) or have a high return on them (all you can eat buffet). For the latter, there was an interesting article in The Hustle on “The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets,” which talks about how eating your worth at a buffet is harder than you think.
Deep Dive into Real Email Marketing Results
But I digest digress, back to email marketing!
Going through email marketing examples with my data analyst hat on, one recent split test showed me something very interesting about customer psychology. This was for a client of mine and we put up a bunch of subject lines and while the open rates varied a little bit from version A to version B to version C, the biggest needle mover was not if they would click or not; rather, the subject line could predict which link they would click.
That’s right, the topic in the subject line subconsciously affects what people are going to read and click in your email. What I saw was that when the subject line focused on the main topic of the newsletter, the secondary item got roughly 15% of the total clicks.
Not bad. Respectable.
However, there was one version that mentioned the secondary item in the subject line as well. This time, though, the “click pie” wasn’t cut the same way. Here, I saw the secondary topic take in 34% of the total clicks.
That said, it is very important to understand what is the specific goal that you are trying to achieve and if it is to get people to a specific article, then be sure to bring that subject matter under the spotlight and talk it up already in the subject line.
Do that and watch it shine!
