Increase the ROI of your email newsletter with top 10 testing tips

Testing testing testing is the motto of successful email marketing.  Even the smallest changes can have a huge effect on the results.  We have compiled a list of tips, showing you which variables you need to test.  Variable such as the sender or the subject line will influence the open rates of your emails, whilst elements within the body of the newsletter such as the design or content, will affect the click rates.  Happy testing…

Day and time of send out and contact frequency: Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon?  The best time to send your emails out varies according to the sender as well as the products you’re advertising.  Generally speaking, Tuesdays to Thursdays are the favourite weekdays amongst marketers.  With regards to the send out frequency, it is tricky to find the optimal balance between contacting the customers too often or too little.  During the holiday season, think about increasing contact with your customers:  more than 50% of major email senders contact their clients more than once a week.

List source: With the enhanced reporting features of eC-messenger, you can analyse the performance of your emails from the address.  Thus you gain an insight on the quality of your email addresses, giving you the opportunity to optimise your lead generation accordingly.

Email design:  Vary the design options of your newsletter.  Test light vs. heavy illustrations and discreet vs. flashy designs.

Content: Find out whether your customers prefer mono- or multi-thematic campaigns or informative content or pure sales content.  Will your clients cope better with many or few links?

Text style: Test the style of your sales approach.  Do your customers prefer a formal or a humourous style?

Type of offers: Tune in to the preferences of your customers.  Which kind of offers come across as more attractive:  price reductions as a percentage or in monetary terms?  Do your customers like to cash coupons or do they enjoy taking part in prize draws?

Personalisation: From the greeting and subject lines to whole content blocks, with the aid of a professional broadcast solution you can implement even the most complex personalisation.  Test the extent of how the performance of your newsletter can be increased with an individual customer approach.

Subject line: Just from the subject line, recipients make the decision in seconds whether to open the email or delete it.  Within eC-messenger, you can test two subject lines alongside each other and the main distribution is carried out automatically with the most successful message.

Demographics and geography: Find out if you can describe your best customers by demographic or geographic attributes and contact them in a second step with offers tailored to their profiles.

Customer behaviour: Analyse who buys when and which influences the level of usage (heavy openers, heavy clickers etc) has on purchases.  Additionally try to make use of any cross-selling or up-selling potential.  Take a look at any last purchases and send offers concerning related products. 

This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If this article was forwarded to you as a recommendation and you wish to receive further news from the email marketing sector yourself you can subscribe here.