The Importance of A/B Testing Your Email Campaigns

a/b testingIn the construction industry, where a single client can bring you thousands in profit, even a minor improvement in your email response rate can make a difference in your company’s success. A/B testing helps you find out what your email subscribers respond to best, so you can optimize your campaigns to pull in clients.

Fine-Tune Your Campaigns

A/B testing, also known as split testing, lets you compare the results of two different versions – version A and version B – of any part of an email. When you know which version garners more interest, you’ll have a better idea of how to write your future emails. Among the elements you can test are:

  • Subject lines
  • Layouts and design
  • Images
  • Personalization
  • Body text
  • Calls to action
  • Specific offers
  • Mailing times

Most email marketing platforms provide built-in tools for A/B testing. Running a few tests might show you that an offer of a free strategy session on educational facility construction gets more interest than a downloadable case study on the same topic or that your prospects respond better to Thursday emails than to Monday ones. Adjust your future campaigns to reflect this, and you can bring in new clients you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Back Your Hunches with Data

If you’ve been in the industry for a while, it’s only natural to assume you have a good feel for what your prospects will respond to. Without data to back up your assumptions, though, you could be making mistakes that are costing you clients. A/B testing gives you hard data on the open rate and click through rate of your emails, and can even track the conversion rate of your readers once they reach your website.

You’ll know for sure if including several photos in your home improvement newsletter really gets the best results or if a single great photo actually works better. When you do see an improved response, you’ll have proof of what caused it so you can reproduce your results.

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