Sneak Peek: Split Testing in Interspire Email Marketer 5.5

We will be launching Interspire Email Marketer 5.5 shortly. I’m excited to get my hands on the new testing features. The new version makes testing different email messages on your list as simple as ticking some check boxes, thanks to the new split testing feature that Mitch talked briefly about last week.

If you manage a large list, you understand the balance of frequency, relevancy, and audience. Every email counts. Testing is part-in-parcel with the email marketing gig. Every large email campaign is tested based on its subject lines, the offer and sometimes the artwork, to see which performs best based on open or conversation rates. Interspire Email Marketer 5.5 will make this usually challenging task a breeze to run for everyone.

Testing Matters

You can spend countless hours of marketing discussion about red versus blue, or you can test it on a portion of your audience to know without a doubt which works best. The driving power of email as a marketing channel is to track and test emails. Every aspect of the email and its delivery can be monitored and therefore improved over time. The basic idea is to test, to test often, and generally to use the metrics that make email such a powerful marketing tool, offering a compelling ROI ($52 returned for every $1 spent on email marketing, according to the direct marketing association in 2007) and instant gratification.

A Sneak Peek at Split Testing in Action

The value, power and importance of split testing are easy to understand, especially once you see the feature in action. Here are a few screenshots of the feature in the upcoming release of Interspire Email Marketer 5.5 from the software team (after the launch, I’ll walk you through some video tutorials of the system).


Creating a split test in Interspire Email Marketer 5.5

In the screenshot above you simply choose the emails you want to test and then you might run a basic A/B split test — to choose two versions of the same email to send to a sampling of your list. But you don’t have to stop with A and B. You can choose as many emails versions as you like, to test subject lines, headlines, artwork, colors, or the offer. With a large enough list, you could test 10, 20, or 50 versions. Think of the insight you'd get from testing that many variations on such a large sample size.

As email marketers we spend a lot of time sweating over open rates, click through rates, unsubscribes and the conversion rate. So why not make them all variables in our split test? Interspire Email Marketer 5.5 is up to the task. In the second option for the "type of test to run" in the screenshot above, whichever email performs best to a small portion of the list can then be auto-magically sent to the rest of your list at whatever interval after the inital sample test send you specify.

Metrics In Mind

When performing the A/B split test, whichever version performs better is the winner, and off it goes to the rest of your selected contacts. But, if you’re testing multiple emails for a large list, more rigid standards to define success based on industry averages might be applied.


Viewing statistics for a sent split test in Interspire Email Marketer 5.5

Here are three standards to consider for overall performance of your email campaigns.

• The open rate is essentially just a test of your from name and email address as well as your subject line. Do you have a relevant message for the right audience? Shoot for better than 50 percent and you’ll be doing quite well.
• The click through rate is all about your offer and the delivery. You might test different sales hooks, giveaway offers, the design, or masthead. Look for 15 percent on click throughs and you’ll be beating the average.
• Ultimately, the conversation rate is what matters. Did it work? Did you encourage the action or get the sale? I expect a conversion rate to reach and exceed 5 percent.

More news and video tutorials on Interspire Email Marketer 5.5 to come once we launch the new version next week, including details on other new features such as trigger emails, contact assignment rules, manual (phone, meeting) and automatic (received email campaign, autoresponder, trigger email) event logging and more. Stay tuned.

In the meantime I'd love to hear your comments on split testing or even tweaking email content in general. What have you tried? What worked? What bombed? Leave me a comment below and let's discuss.