Associated Mail & Parcel Centers Blog

For those of you who do email marketing (and this should be all of you) there are some things that may be of interest to you.

Number one is that (according to the Direct Mail Association) the ROI for email marketing is over $40. That means that for every $1.00 you spend on email marketing, you get over $40.00 back – an outstanding return that could only be matched in the market by Bernie Madoff – and this ROI is legitimate and real.

Number two is that how you send and word the email determines the sales outcome and there are ways to test that outcome. One way is called A/B testing.

I worked for an engineer who was trying to bore a perfect hole through a bar of steel with a gang of cutters rather than the conventional boring bar. He would bore a hole and then measure it completely through for any taper, and then make changes in speeds, feeds, rotation, and other factors and then try it again and compare the results.

He never came to an accurate conclusion because he always changed two or three factors at a time and then ran the test again. He needed to change only one factor at a time to see if that factor helped or hindered the result and then proceed to the next change. This is how you should test your email marketing strategies.

A/B Testing allows you to find out the following by sending out two emails that differ slightly in only one factor at a time.

• Which of two subject lines gets more opens? Will the word “Free” help, or hurt? Are longer subject lines better than shorter ones?
• Which day is best? Are weekdays better than weekends? Are some days better for opens, but others for clicks?
• What time of day is best? Do people open in the morning, or evening? When do they click more?
• What “From” name will people respond to most? Will they open if they see your company name, or do they prefer personal names from sales reps they know? Or should you use both?

The following resources are helpful in working with A/B testing. Email services such as Mail Chimp (www.mailchimp.com) have A/B testing features built in to their mailing programs. Mail Chimp provided these resources and the testing criteria above.

• How to use A/B Split Testing to Increase Conversion Rates MarketingExperiments.com
• With A/B Testing, You don’t think-you know – Jeff Campbell, Resolution Media
• How to Improve A/B Testing – Bryan Eisenberg
• Subject Line Testing Scenarios – A handful of very quick, easy subject line a/b tests you can run right now.
• Email Marketing Needs A/B Testing: A fan of ConstantContact.com discusses the need for A/B testing
• The Most Important E-Mail Marketing Tactic of All: Bill Nussey of Silverpop discusses why A/B testing your email marketing is so important, and gives some suggestions on what to test.
• Testing and Email Marketing: A list of resources about testing your email marketing campaigns
• 10 Quick Wins for Email Marketing: #7 – Testing (tips from iMedia Connection)
• Incorporate Testing Into Your Game Plan: Blog post from David Baker at MediaPost
• 1/3 Opens Occur in First Hour: When you send an A/B test, how long should you wait to check stats?