What to test in email marketing & ecommerce

With email marketing you can measure effectively who opened your email and what links they clicked on. This information will help you to continually improve your email marketing communications and improve the success of your campaigns.

Subject line – The subject line helps get your email opened and is a very important aspect of email marketing communications. If your company has the ability to segment, consider making the subject line relevant to a segmented list – which is key to getting opened.

From – This is something that should be tested very early on. In general the “from” is used by marketers to establish exactly WHO this email is coming from – and recipients have come to expect that as well. This is a decision your company should make: is it the brand, the company, the name of the email newsletter, or the name of an individual? It should definitely be a company or brand name, not an email address, generic department or unfamiliar person’s name. Also, the actual email address used should include the company or brand name, not a generic address such as reply@companyname.co.uk – which can trigger spam filters.

Call to action – Testing this is imperative. Because of its importance the call to action has been given its own section.

Layout – The layout, look, style, fonts and even colours can give a professional sheen to email marketing communications and reinforces your brand. Test all aspects of these to see if they could perform better. If over several issues you find that articles and topics in the mailings are not performing well – i.e. not getting clicks of significant numbers, test the location in the layout or have a different style synopsis to the article.

Copy length – Here’s an interesting area to test. Though brevity is important in this day and age of scanning the inbox, studies are finding that long copy can indeed perform as well as short copy. You may get fewer clicks but more conversion (more intensely interested then just generally interested).

Time, day, frequency – If you go by industry ‘standards’, the best days to send are Tues/Wed morning for B2B and Fri/Sat for B2C. But this may not suit your database at all. Testing is how you will assess what your readers respond best to. There are some practical mail times, such as sports and travel at the weekends, and business information during the week – otherwise it really is up to you to test and find out.

If follow-up marketing were easy, everybody would be doing it. But it’s not easy. It’s a real challenge!

First of all, you’ve got to carve out the time to keep in touch. (You, of course, have overcome this obstacle with Infusionsoft!) But secondly, you’ve got to know how, when, and how often to send your marketing pieces. And for most small business owners, this presents a problem.

You have Infusionsoft. So you have a lot of marketing power at your fingertips. But unless you’ve studied marketing, you may not know how or where to start.

In fact, one of the first questions our new customers ask is: what should my follow-up sequence look like?

Well, we’d love to answer that question. But follow-up sequences are going to be different for every small business. For one business owner, once a week is perfect. For another, every other day is ideal. You’ve got to figure that out for yourself. However, there are 5 things we suggest you do to create successful marketing sequences.
#1- Get Permission

Before starting any follow-up sequence, be sure your contacts WANT to receive the information you’re sending. Whether you include a checkbox on a webform, use a double opt-in, or collect business cards in a fish bowl, you need permission to market to each new contact.

If you’re using email marketing, getting permission isn’t just a good idea…it’s the law! To get the best response from your marketing sequences, double opting-in new contacts is your best bet.
#2 Survey Your Contacts

How often do your contacts want to hear from you? Well, you’re never going to know until you ask. Surveys are a great way to find out what your customers and prospects want. And although not every contact feels the same, a survey will help you gage the interest level in your marketing pieces.
#3 Observe What Others Are Doing

Chances are, someone in your industry is following up with their contacts. Add yourself to one of their marketing campaigns and see what they’re doing. How often do you receive messages? What form are the marketing messages coming in?

As a “prospect” or “customer”, ask yourself how you feel about the communication you’re getting. And then plan your sequences accordingly.
#4 Mix Educational and Sales Copy

Follow-up marketing sequences need to dance that fine line between providing your contacts with value, and asking them to buy. If you bombard your contact list with sales pitches, you’ll soon lose the interest of your prospects and customers. To keep them interested, you need to be providing your contacts with education, suggestions, tips and tricks of your industry…and once in a while…a sales pitch.

The more education and value you provide your contacts, the better your relationship will become. And you’ll soon find they don’t mind receiving your “pitches” either.
#5 Test Everything

No matter how great your marketing sequences may seem to you, sometimes you just miss the mark. Keep track of your marketing sequences. Pay attention to open rates on your emails. Chart the conversion rates of each sequence you put in place. Then be prepared to make a few tweaks to your marketing campaigns if you need to.