As marketers and advertisers, we often use different mediums to reach our customers. Whether it’s a snappy TV commercial or an eye-catching banner ad on a website, one aspect remains the same: testing works. When you produce a commercial, focus groups are called in to give feedback on the tape. Online advertisers will test banner ads to find the best response. But many marketers miss a prime opportunity to do the same with their email campaigns.

We all know that email has the highest return on investment (ROI), but if you could make your dollar work harder for you, why not? Testing is quick, easy, and effective.  No matter what type of testing you choose to do, the setup is quite simple. All you need to do is set up two segmentations, test emails to the segmentations, and find the results. Click here to read this month’s Factory Direct article on email testing.

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As email grows in popularity, it becomes increasingly important to create messages that stand out in the inbox. The subject line is your first chance to grab your subscriber’s attention, and strategies like testing your subject line can help increase your open rate dramatically. To learn more about subject line testing, click here.

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We all understand how important TESTING is for email marketers. Not the internal testing to check for formatting and grammatical errors, but the comparative testing performed to optimize email performance. Testing content options, various image or link placements, subject lines, or the best day/time to send an email.

Testing is one of the key benefits with email. You can’t easily test traditional marketing (direct mail, ads, etc.), but with email you can.

…..yet few companies bother to test.

We are working to change that trend, and a key Publicaster feature will be an important part of this transition from little testing to a lot of testing!

It’s simple, powerful and quick to set up:

In Publicaster, choose List Manager.
Then choose Manage Segmentation.
Then choose the List or Segmentation that you want to mail to.
Next select the Random Mailing option.
Choose the number of recipients you want to send a test to, and add in that number.
You’re finished.

How easy is that!

Here’s how it works, and how I’d suggest you use it.

Let’s say you have a newsletter that you are sending out monthly. It’s getting decent Open Rates (35%) but poor Click or Conversion rates. Do you know why? Do you know if some format or content changes might improve performance? Maybe the time or day of the week would make a difference?

Why not test a few simple changes in your newsletter to see how they affect performance (I can almost guarantee that testing will reveal key areas for improvement, but since it’s so easy to do, and doesn’t cost extra, even if it doesn’t change your results, you haven’t lost anything from the effort).

Test two different variables to begin: In one version, stick with your current format. In the second version, change the Subject Line, and in the third version stick with the first subject line (so you are only testing one variable change at a time) but send your newsletter on Friday at 1:00p EST (assuming you aren’t currently sending it that day/time).

To do this in Publicaster, you simply choose 1/3 of your list in the Random Mailing Tool as discussed above for the first mailing. This Random Mailing Tool will automatically pull out a completely random sampling of your total list, ensuring that there will be no bias from the list sample. For the second mailing, you do the same thing, and add a segmentation condition specifying that you want the random sample not to include anyone who received the first mailing. Then do the same for the third mailing so the last 1/3 of the list doesn’t include anyone from the first or second mailing, and you are finished.

In a matter of minutes, you will have successfully tested for two key variables to see how they affect your results. After doing this a few times for each monthly newsletter, and testing different variables against one another, you’ll find a perfect format for your audience!

I have always felt that one of the most significant benefits of online advertising/marketing is the ability to TEST. Those who test can actually ‘get it right’, or about as close as anyone could ever expect to get. Testing to find the best option minimizes waste, both financial and intellectual.

Despite more and more press on the importance of testing, most companies still do not test nearly enough. One reason is time…there just isn’t enough of it! So most companies stick with standard strategies and accept their fate, without ever really challenging the status quo and looking for better options.

There is a great website to help those who wish to begin testing, or maybe to improve what they already do… www.sitespect.com. As their tagline says…. “Optimize Your Conversion Rates and Turn More Visitors Into Customers”.

Using A/B, Multivariate or Split testing, you can set up a number of testing options for web pages / landing pages to find out exactly which pages are converting best.

For email marketers, this is a perfect tool to help play around with variations of web pages that you have your recipients click through in your emails. Optimize your landing pages so all of your hardwork to get click-thrus pays off! Sometimes very simple changes to landing pages can make a significant difference in conversion rates, and www.sitespect.com makes it easier than ever to find out.

Test away!