Email Marketing Split Testing

If you have read very many good email marketing articles, you probably have read countless times to continue to analyze the performance of your emails that you are sending out. There are so many variations when it comes to what works and what is not working. At the same time, any email marketer with their salt will tell you never to spam your list. The problem now is, if you are sending out only a limited number of emails each year then how are you really supposed to analyze the performance?

This is where split testing comes into play. Split testing is the process in which you test two or more things in the emails you send to your opted in list. So for example, you want to test the format of your newsletter. You might gather three different formats of the same newsletter. Send the first format to the first 1/3rd of your list. The second, to the second 1/3rd. Of course, the third formatted newsletter would go to the last 1/3rd of your list. The benefit here is that you will be able to see which newsletter performed the best.

Not only could you test format, but you could also test out subject lines. You could see which subject line had the best response. So the idea in mind here is be able to determine which subject would work the best so that you can use that format and subject line in the future as well. Maximizing the profit and return of investment of time spent on each email sent.

This may sound difficult and time consuming, and it is. I am not going to tell you that making three different copies of a newsletter or email is easy. It is not. The thing is though is that you can either spend a year just testing what works, or maybe speed up the process by testing out multiple things in a single month. Hopefully it will quickly get you to the place you want to be. Within a few months, you should have maximized the profits you would generate from your email marketing campaign.

A quick tip as well is to split who you are testing randomly by who has been on the list the longest. Naturally, most people who are on your list recently are frequently more interested in what you have to say. It is not that those older opted in people are not interested, it is just they may be used to receiving emails from you. When this is the case, they will be more inclined to delete them unless they are regular readers. This may be something else you need to individually test out, but this has just been my experience. Therefore, when split testing, I would encourage you to take a sample and not just send one format to the emails on your list the longest and then another to the newest ones. Spread it around and if your email marketing software has it available, you could just do it randomly.

Also, never hesitate to continue to test things out. For example, if you have split tested a subject, you found that one subject worked over another. Try to analyze why that one was the most popular. Perhaps you had your product as the first word on the subject line, what about putting a discount like “50% off” in the subject line with it? Would that help, or does it hurt you? Do not just settle on a subject line after you have split tested it one time. You can continuously be improving on it each month, making much more progress on improving your email marketing campaigns.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Software Selection – The Open Rate

Choosing the right email marketing software is not the easiest process. I am not going to sit here and tell you exactly which one to choose because there are many that have features that bloat them by my standards, but you may find them useful. So, I am simply going to give you one of the features that I think any email marketing software should have as a standard feature.

This single feature is the open rate. This may sound somewhat silly, but it is actually very good analysis to have. What is the first thing you do when you open up your email? Generally, you read the titles. However, the second thing you do is open up those that you want to read. If you have emails that you do not want to read, those immediately get tossed into the delete folder or deleted permanently. From an email marketing perspective, this is a great way to see what is working and what is not working. The email marketing software should give you a rundown of what percentage of emails you are getting opened.

So exactly how do I use the open rate to benefit me?

First off, you should not just have a single number. If the email marketing software only has this, then I would contemplate looking at another. Instead, you should be able to see the open rate on each email you send as well.

The benefit to being able to see the open rate on each email is that you will find what subject lines are working. For example, if you own a car parts store you might send out a newsletter one month on rotors that you have for sale. This may have an open rate of 50%. The following month you might send one out on alternators and have an open rate of 75%. Clearly, there are at least 25% more people interested in your alternators than your rotors. You might send follow-up emails each time you have alternators for sale.

Also, the formatting of your subject line may make a huge difference. Often a mistake I see is that people will put very generic subject lines on their emails. For example, “Awesome Car Products” could be a generic subject some people would use on their newsletter if they owned a car products website. Generally, I do not have much success at this, but you might test it out yourself. The following month though, they might have “Alternators and Other Parts - 50% off”. Generally you will always find the more specific subject line to do better, but again, email marketing is all about testing so I would encourage you to try outrageous things and you may find it will work for you.

You can even get further into the analysis though. I will continue on from the example analysis found above. Now that you know that alternators are of interest and you need specific subject lines for the best results, perhaps it is time to begin very specific analysis. Instead of using “Alternators and Other Parts – 50% off”, you could use the subject “50% off On All Alternators and Other Parts”. How do the two subjects compare? Do you think that having the first word they read as “Alternator” maybe made a difference? Did the discount on the front of the subject have a bigger impact on the reader? All of these come into play in the open rate. It is something you should not ignore.

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Email Marketing Software Selection – Tracking Visitors

There needs to be more to email marketing software than just sending a lot of emails out. You really should be able to analyze the performance of your emails. If you are unable to do this with whatever email marketing software you are currently looking at, I would encourage you to go elsewhere. Generally, there are several options out there, but you do not want to find one with too many features that you do not need, nor do you want to use one that does not have the features needed to figure out how your emails or newsletters are performing.

One of the features that email marketing software should have is the ability to track visitors. There is more to email marketing than simply sending out a random email each month. This will show it. Here is how it works. If you send out 10,000 emails with your newsletter, but 1,000 ends up clicking on a link inside of it, then you know that 10% of your subscribers could be considered “responsive subscribers”. This number would actually be considered to be pretty good. Anything below about 5% is considered poor.

So how do I get this number up? This is where the analysis comes in handy. Are you enticing your readers to click on a link? For example, I have seen some emails that will give the price of products you are advertising in the newsletter directly in it. Generally though, this will severely hurt your responsive subscribers rating. If they have all of the details in the newsletter, this is not necessarily a bad idea if you are getting a higher conversion rating. However, those who may be shopping around may not be enticed to click on the link to actually purchase that item unless they know they will be buying it from you. My personal opinion is that you should try both methods. The overall goal is have your readers buy from you, but if you are getting them to your site then this is a good step in the right direction.

You can also start evaluating the formatting of the newsletter itself. You must find a good balance of giving enough information, but not too much. Most ecommerce stores have hundreds of products for sale. Not each product needs to go on a newsletter. You do not want to just make a huge list that they have to filter through to find a product that they are interested in. Instead, the subject should be relative mostly to what the newsletter is about. If you own a car parts ecommerce store and you already know that your readers are primarily opening emails with the subject related to “Alternators”, maybe it would be a good idea to have your alternators as the primary purpose inside the newsletters. This is not to say that you should not have a link to some of your spark plugs, spark plug wires, and rotors though. These should just be secondary things. The alternators need to be big and extremely visible in most cases. However, the placement of it, whether you align it to the left or the right can even make a difference. All of this can be tested if you are able to track visitors that are clicking links inside of your newsletter.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Software Selection – Doing the Dirty Work

Finding good email marketing software should not be tough. You want a lot of things to be automated for you when trying to find email marketing software. However, automation does not mean that studying the analysis is going to be automated as well. There truly is an art when it comes to email marketing. I am not going to sit here and tell you that all you need to do is gather a list and send out emails every month to it. This is probably a good way to fail at it. Instead, you really have to focus on what is working, cut the things that are not. A lot of the email marketing software on the market will have everything you need, but only a few you may understand how to use.

For this reason, I would encourage you to find one that puts things that are easy for you to understand. I have spent some time here talking about how open rates and tracking visitors is important to email marketing. However, do you remember me talking about focusing on the subject lines that you have used to determine open ratings?

The list of subject lines you have used, in my opinion, should be held in a single area within the database. You do not want to have to formulate this list on your own. This is part of the dirty work that needs to be completed by the software. The goal here is to be able to efficiently analyze what is and is not working. If you are unable to do this, there is very little reasoning in having the software.

Another thing to think about is the ease of using the software overall. Collecting the database information you need is important, but if you are unable to send emails easily to your list, then what purpose does it serve? You should always find software that is easy to work. I have heard numerous people’s preference on which software is the easiest, so I will not encourage you to only try one. Rather, most email marketing software out there has demos which are very limited. You should still try them out and see what you do or do not like about them before selecting one. Keep in mind that these email marketing software companies have several resources online telling you that they are the best. Just be wary and use your own judgment in determining whether it will work for you or not.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Newsletters – Customer Retention

I am an avid buyer online. Maybe another word you could use is spender. If I need an item, I do a quick Google search, find a company that looks like it may have been in business for a while, read a couple of reviews, and make the purchase. A couple of years down the road I may need another item of the same kind. I am guilty of not going back to my emails from years before or seeing exactly where I purchased it. Often times I can never remember where I had purchased it. So basically I do the same process as above.

Internet buyers are this way. It is not as though they can go to a local store. They will almost always remember where they went to get a product. For some reason it is not that way when you buy things online. So how do you keep customers around? The answer in short would be newsletters.

If you own an online business, even if it is making sales, you should always ask your buyers if they want to opt in to a newsletter. Many times they will say no, but those that might be interested in seeing other specials you have would be willing to accept newsletters from you.

I will use my dad as a classic example. A few years back he bought an item called an “elmo”. This product is fairly rare, not frequently found in local retail stores. He had no idea where he had purchased that one. We went back online to find another place to buy one. They never were able to keep my dad as a customer. However, had he received a newsletter every month, he probably would have not only remembered, but made another purchase after the other one broke to no fault of the manufacturer or company that sold it to him. Not only this, but they probably would have sold him another Elmo and a projector which he needed that is a common accessory to go with an Elmo.

Another risk is not just the individual buyers, but companies. Let’s say that I own a car repair business. I know that you are probably one of the many places online I could buy from. I might find a rare type of alternator at your website that you could supply. If I do not go back to your website for a long time, I could easily forget where I found it at. Not only this, but when you have specials on items, I may never be aware of them, even if it could put more money in my pocket when buying from you.

See, the idea here is that you want to make your name aware to people. People always use email and it is quickly becoming one of the most used pieces of communication in the world today. You do not need to spam people to gain buyers, you just have to put your name in front of them and encourage them to buy from you. Even if they are not willing to right that minute, they may remember you later on down the road and buy from you then. Email marketing has a lasting effect that cannot be ignored when it comes to customer retention.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing Is Not Spam

When many people think of the term email marketing they often shiver at the thought of using this marketing technique. They begin to think of how their own email’s inbox fills up with unnecessary emails within mere hours each day.  However, I am here to tell you that this is not email marketing done properly, it is just spam. I know if you are reading this that you want to keep your company in positive light and stay away from unethical business practices. Below are ways to not only hold to ethical email marketing standards, but also give you better conversion ratings as well without spamming potential customers.

Rule #1: Always allow an easy way for email recipients to unsubscribe

One of the most frustrating things about getting spam is that you are typically unable to unsubscribe from it. Instead, you have to add them to a spam senders list or create a rule that will filter the emails out of your inbox. You do not want to be grouped with these people. You should always make it easy for email recipients to unsubscribe from receiving newsletters or frequently sent emails.

Not only is giving an unsubscribing option an ethical way to approach sending regular emails to people, but it is also a good way to gain respect. Even those who unsubscribe from your emails will probably remember your companies’ name. They probably just do not want to receive regular updates. However, if they recognize that you are not a desperate company, then they are much more inclined to return to do business with you in the future.

Rule #2: Limit the number of emails each recipient receives

It does not matter how cool or how interested I am in the topic of the emails, if I get too many of them I am quickly growing tired of all the emails. For example, I had a forum that I visited all the time last year send me daily emails of the hottest topics, new members, etc. I was interested in a lot of what was written in them, but I did not feel that I needed a daily email on the topics. It became very annoying, and within a couple of weeks of receiving these, I quickly unsubscribed from receiving them all together.

My personal philosophy of overcoming this is to never send potential buyers more than one email per month. Once per month is frequently enough that you will keep your business fresh on the memory of those who are on your email list. It is long enough though that they will not grow too tired of receiving them. More than not if they just delete your email once per month, they will not spend the time necessary to unsubscribe in most cases. They might delete it, but when they need one of your products, they may return to that email later on.

Rule #3: Be relative to what they might be looking for

I have purposely signed up for newsletters before. When they are done properly, I really do not mind receiving them. However, when the emails are done poorly and without any thought being involved, it can quickly make me unsubscribe. One of the most frustrating things about newsletters is that they are often automatically generated. However, I want to encourage you to put some effort into yours. When you want to sell a specific item, you should carefully look at those who previously bought that item from you. Make sure you target them. You may find that you have better conversion ratings when you do not send emails to everyone on your list and only target specific ones.

It is, however, acceptable to place multiple things into one newsletter. For example, let’s say that you subscribed to me on this page. You are probably most interested in email marketing. It would probably be wise for me to only send you emails that are relative to email marketing. However, in an organized newsletter I could also write brief things about Pay Per Click and Article Marketing as well. You may be less interested in those topics, so they would not be the primary purpose. However, I could track what links you clicked on and determine whether you gained interest in it or not so in the future I might send you a newsletter on other topics as well.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing - Tailoring your emails to the readers

There are several marketing methods that you can use. Within this, I am certainly not going to tell you to that you should not explore what other marketing methods out there. However, my goal is to encourage you to try email marketing if you think it is a possibility for your ecommerce website.

First of all, you should be aware that there some pretty strict rules when it comes to email marketing. In fact, when most people hear about it for the first time they immediately think of the countless spam emails they have sent to their email inbox every day. Fortunately, this is not what email marketing is about. The difference between spam and email marketing is that within the proper way of email marketing you are required to not send unsolicited emails. For example, pulling a random list of email addresses from a database of some kind and sending each of them an email is pretty frowned upon. Not only by those receiving the emails, but also by law. You could end paying a hefty fine if you are caught doing this.

Not only is it illegal, but it will not work. How many times, if ever, have you responded to the spam email that you receive? You have more probability of having your email added to the junk senders list than you do to get someone to respond. I, for one, have never responded or purchased anything from spam that has hit my inbox. Even if I am interested in their type of service or product, I might read the email. If I know that I never subscribed to receive the email then it reeks of unprofessionalism and I will go elsewhere to make my purchase.

So when does it work? 

It works when you have real leads with people who are really interested in your products. I will use a classic example. I have purchased my airline tickets several times online. I ended up purchasing once from a popular company online that sells airline tickets. Every month or so they will send me an email with specials they have going on. Typically, I always go through them when I am looking to go on a vacation. I have probably made at least three or four purchases through them, several times through their email. Their email seems to be targeted to me as they know my routine buying pattern. I do not rent hotels from them normally, but their emails target the area specials from my airport.

The idea here is that I am not simply getting an email from them when I have never purchased from them and have no interest in buying plane tickets online. They know that I buy plane tickets online. They know where I flew from. I am interested in what they have to offer. Maybe not every time they send me something, but if I buy something from them once out of every 12 emails they might send me a year that is worth it for them.

The concept here is that you need to market via email to those interested in your products. If you are not doing this then you may be wasting your time. You will even see better results if you are capable of refining your emails to specific people who might be interested in a certain product. For example, if you sell office supplies and you had someone buy staples from your store, I would encourage you to send them an email each time you have a sell on them. They probably couldn’t care less when you send them emails about specials on laptops or something else.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

Email Marketing – Generating Leads

So now that you have the basic concept of what email marketing is, you probably want to know where to send these emails to. The typical person that you would want to send your email to would be someone who could also be referred to as a lead.

So what exactly is a lead? A lead would be a person that perhaps some type of interest in your product. For example, you should be realistic enough to know that if you sell toy cars that not everyone is going to be interested in this product. However, those who are searching for it online, watch videos of toy cars, or have purchased a toy car from you are perhaps more likely to buy from you in the future than anyone else.

The process of generating leads is extremely important if you intend to do email marketing. This is why creating lists of email addresses and people are so important to do from the very beginning. Even though you may never actually send emails out you should still collect emails whenever possible. You never know when you might find them useful later on. It does not matter what point you are at now, whether you have had your website up for several years or you are just getting ready to work through your sales pitch. If you can find a place to collect emails from your site visitors, you should.

How gathering emails should be done

Generally, there are numerous ways to collect people. Probably the most popular ploy is to offer something for free. In return, you make sure they give you a valid email address. One of the best marketers I have seen used this tactic and is quite successful at it. What he does before he releases a new marketing class that he puts on, he will release a few videos. These videos will give real and quality information to those who watch it. In fact, I loved them and learned a lot from the small tips he offered in them. In the end, he would encourage you to see a few other videos which were private. The only way to see those videos would be to register on his website. He was clear and open with you about it that upon release of his new product, he would be sending you an email to remind you and give you a special deal on the price.

The end result is that I signed up. I got my email that he promised he would send me. I never purchased his product, but many did. I have seen a lot of discussion about it on several forums too. It was clearly a good marketing technique.

Another common way of gathering people on your list is to make those who buy from you give their email to you. This is a good way to retain customers as well. A lot of people will search for something on the internet, they will buy from a company they are not real familiar with, but when they want to buy more of that product they will never know where to find you again. If you send them occasional follow up emails with new specials you are offering you may find that they will buy more products from you in the future. This is not an idea of spamming them everyday, once per month is about right, but could be spread out a little further even if you see fit. Also, the more you can tailor that email to what they previously bought the better. For example, if you own a car parts store and they previously bought rotors off of you, you may consider sending them an email when you have specials on rotors.

Grow by leaps and bounds with software to skyrocket your business: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.