The document discusses 7 subject line hacks that can boost email open rates. It discusses analyzing historical email data to determine that subject lines with 4-7 words performed best. It also discusses testing subject lines that include bracketed content descriptions, using preview text under the subject line, segmenting subscribers based on recent engagement, using rhyme and lists in subject lines, and including social proof from others' experiences. The key lessons are to test different subject line structures and lengths, provide context about email content, re-engage inactive subscribers, and leverage persuasive psychological techniques like rhyme, lists and social proof.
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A/B testing, also known as split testing, compares two versions of the same campaign on a certain channel. These channels include (but are not limited to):
Website
Social Media
Emails
Mobile Apps
Landing Pages
Digital Ads
For example, you could set up a subject line test for adding in personalization (i.e. the person’s first name). Your company hasn’t done that before, but you hope to find that adding in that element will increase overall email engagement. After running the test, you find that adding in the person’s first name increases open rates by 10%, does nothing to click to open rates, but improves conversions on the landing page by 50%.
As in this example, A/B testing is about testing only one element at a time so that marketers can maintain control over the results and draw firm conclusions. From these conclusions, marketers are able to assess the effectiveness of each variable in driving conversions and from there, can make the necessary adjustments to their campaign. By making these necessary adjustments, marketers are able to continue improving their efforts in order to deliver the ROI possible to their organization.
So why is A/B testing important? By assessing the actions of buyers, A/B testing reveals what truly appeals to them. In doing so, it also advances engagement, campaign effectiveness, and marketer expertise. Here are a few specific reasons why A/B testing should be a part of your company’s marketing strategy:
A/B testing increases engagement with your buyers
A/B testing enhances campaign effectiveness and optimizes programs for a company’s target audience
A/B testing enhances a marketer’s awareness and expertise about audience preferences
So let’s say you’re ready to run an a/b test. How should you go about setting it up? Here’s the process I follow:
Choose what to test – think about testing elements that you know would be high impact. Something like a sign-up page, welcome email, or pricing page would be a great place to start.
Ask a question and then write a hypothesis – just like an scientific method, a/b testing begins with developing a hypothesis to answer a question. You can base your hypothesis on what has worked on other digital assets, insights from your colleagues or just plain old instinct!
Decide on the sample group – who are they, what are their past behaviors, and how large is the sample size are critical details. Make sure your test segment is big enough to show results!
Define what success looks like – here, you are trying to figure out what you’re trying to achieve through testing. What are your ultimate success metrics? What will you improve through testing and optimization?
Set up the test – this one is straightforward enough.
Look at the test results – use the success metrics you decided on earlier to evaluate your results. We will talk about this more in a moment.
Determine the winning combination – which version performed better? Did it perform statistically better or just marginally? Was it statistically significant?
Implement the necessary changes – roll out the changes, educate your team, create a process, and start working on the next test!
For all of my tests, I use this simple a/b testing calculator by Kissmetrics! In the first column, you enter your total number of observations, which means if you’re doing landing page testing, this would be total page views. If you were doing subject line testing, this would be emails delivered.
In the second column, it’s the total number of conversions. This is the actual success number.
Between these two values, it gives you a conversion rate and a confidence interval for significance. Normally, you’ll find that calculators are set up for a 95% confidence interval, which means that in order for you to see statistical significance, you need to be at least 95% certain that your test results improve the conversion rate.
If you didn’t use a calculator like this, you might be making changes that aren’t actually statistically significant, which can hurt your conversion rates and the ROI on campaigns.
Well, here is how personalization works within Marketo and how we would normally personalize our emails.
The top section here is a screenshot from the email editor. In the From Name box, you’ll see bracket text. Those are called tokens, which dynamically push in values pulled from fields. The tokens in the From Name send from the Lead Owner. If that email subscriber doesn’t have a lead owner, it will default to Team Marketo.
Same principles apply to the From Address and Reply-to sections where if the email subscriber has a lead owner, that email will come from the lead owner’s email. If they don’t have a lead owner, it defaults to marketoteam@marketo.com.
All emails were sent under these rules until…we tested it! What we found was extremely interesting.
Well, here is how personalization works within Marketo and how we would normally personalize our emails.
The top section here is a screenshot from the email editor. In the From Name box, you’ll see bracket text. Those are called tokens, which dynamically push in values pulled from fields. The tokens in the From Name send from the Lead Owner. If that email subscriber doesn’t have a lead owner, it will default to Team Marketo.
Same principles apply to the From Address and Reply-to sections where if the email subscriber has a lead owner, that email will come from the lead owner’s email. If they don’t have a lead owner, it defaults to marketoteam@marketo.com.
All emails were sent under these rules until…we tested it! What we found was extremely interesting.
Introducing personalization in the beginning of a buyer’s journey might be worse for the buyer.
Make the right business decision even if a test says otherwise.
Use this test to find the right handoff point for personalization
FAILURE TO MEASURE EMAIL INBOXING
Preview text is a piece of copy that gets pulled into the preview pane from the body of an email. Think of it much like a “Johnson” box from a direct mail piece like it’s a peek into what the email really contains. The text will display underneath the From Name and Subject Line.
Just like the [bracket] test, this helps to build context and trust.
In some cases, you have more ‘inactive’ subscribers in your database than active ones
In the example above, a new email address comes into your database on Jan 1. And on Feb 15th, that new email address made their first purchase! You celebrated and continued to market to them to the best of your ability. And boy oh boy, did they love what you sent them. In the engaged subscriber stage, they filled out web forms, clicked emails, engaged with your mobile app, and frequently visited your website.
And then just like that, they went cold without even saying good bye. This happens far too often and companies do not take advantage of subscribers that once loved to engage with their brands and then fell asleep. This is how you isolate your sleepy subscribers.
Subscribers become inactive for various reasons, including:
Changed interests
Expectations not set appropriately
Too many emails
Job change
Irrelevant content
Too busy
Changed email address
Here’s a Marketo example. We run reactivation campaigns and this was our very first test. Our audience was subscribers who had not engaged with our digital campaigns in 1 year or more. On the left, you’ll see our control, which was for the Definitive Guide to Digital Advertising. There is nothing different about this email in terms of messaging or content for a subscriber that hasn’t engaged in a while. On the right, you’ll see our test.
The subject line for our test email was “First Name, We Really Miss You”. The banner reads “We Really Miss Hearing From You” and we use a sad looking dog to get the emotions going. And to use language that our email subscribers aren’t familiar with, we start with “Here’s the deal, Mike”.
We let them know why we are reaching out. “At some point, you subscribed to Marketo emails. Ever since then, we’ve been emailing you our best ebooks, cheatsheets, definitive guides, and other marketing offers. But then we noticed something disturbing. You haven’t opened or clicked any of these emails in the past year!!!!”
So far, we’ve provided context. This email then goes into saying how we don’t want to clutter your inbox with unwanted email and unless you click the big orange button (which you cannot see here), we won’t know it’s okay to keep sending you emails.
Now let’s look at the results!
We had a very clear winner here and it was our reactivation email!
We saw a 70% higher open rate, a 325% higher click to open rate, and a 621% higher click through rate. I should also add that we called out the link to our subscription center in this email as well, so about half of the clicks we received were to update email preferences., which is a very positive result for this test.
Overall, this email reactivated 238% more subscribers than our control email. That means that we now have a way to engage our sleepy subscribers in a way that is 238% better than our normal marketing efforts!
Even better, we now have determined that there is a strategy where we can email our unengaged leads independent of our engaged leads, which leads to higher engagement, better sender reputation, better email deliverability, and higher open rates for both audiences!
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Alright, that’s all I have for you. Before I answer a few questions, I’d like to remind you that there is a brief survey after this webinar. Please take 30 seconds to complete it to let me know how we can make these better for you in the future.
Now on to the questions!
What do you think about the use of emojis in the email subject line?
When testing new subject lines, is there ever a time where you feel like the copy needs to be tweaked too?
Is it better to personalize subject lines with the subscriber’s first name?