Friday, July 15, 2011

Testing is Your Vital Key

How many of you find yourself wondering why your email campaigns show different numbers? Are you thinking context, subject lines used or even the time sent makes a difference? It sure it does. Testing your campaigns can give you answers that are beneficial in building stronger emails.

Here at Kobemail we offer resources like, A/B splits and Nth Sampling to help our clients figure out what works best for them. For those not familiar with A/B split, this is the strategy of sending two or more different emails to the same list. Usually lists are evenly divided. For instance, a list testing 2 campaigns splits would be separated 50:50 for this strategy. As for Nth Sampling, emails are only sent to a specific group. Example - you have a list of 100 users but you specify to send the variable email to every 3rd users up to the 50th users on the list.

When testing there are some suggestions you should keep in mind.


  • Always have a control email. Control email needs to be analyzed under the same conditions as the group you are testing, but without the changed variable. This way you are able to quantify the effects of the unknown variable corresponding to the control.

  • Send all test campaigns at the same time. Sending campaigns at different intervals will not give you accurate data.

  • If you are testing reaction to different days/hour it is advisable to send out the same campaign where only day/hour will vary.

  • Test one change at a time. It is always recommended to just have one modification to each email. This way you can get a clear understanding of what factors caused any performance related changes. Small adjustments, like moving around an image, can receive vast reactions.

It is always suggested to embrace testing. This way you can always figure out what works better or what does not works at all. Test often. Make it a part of your process as it is not here to back track your campaigns but to help you achieve productive emails.

Author: Adeline Zeledon
Editor: Roopal Rawani

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