Related reading: The Highest-Impact Email A/B Tests We’ve Ever Run
How to run email marketing A/B tests
In a nutshell, here is how to A/B test your email marketing campaigns:- Take a small sample of your email list, or split your entire list into two.
- Send out two emails, with two variations (called “A” and “B”).
- In A/B testing, the “A” is the control group, the “B” is the variant group.
- Track your results for the best open rate, views, click-through rate and/or sales conversion.
- Use the best email test to send out to the majority of your list.
- Improve your results with little effort.
A/B Testing Example
To give you a good understanding of A/B testing your email, I’m using a real email example from a recently successful campaign we sent. I’ll use the example to go through a number of split tests you can act on to give you the most optimized results. Example: Our marketing objectives for the campaign were to nurture leads and ultimately increase sign-ups to our Wishpond VIP demo. We sent out the email to a targeted segment. Here’s the original email:

A/B Test Your Subject Line
Your subject line is what grabs the attention of your prospect. It plays a massive role as to whether your email gets opened and viewed – the essential first steps in getting to the sale. Test your subject line to give yourself the biggest bang for your efforts. There are tons of ways you can test your subject lines. The top 3 variables are:
- Personalization vs. No Personalization
- “You” vs. No “You”
- Long vs. Short Subject Lines
1. Personalization vs. No Personalization
Personalizing your subject line means adding your recipients name, or other personal information you have about your prospects. We tested adding personalization vs. not adding personalization with a small segment of our lists. Specifically, we sent out 100 emails to test these two subject lines:
2. “You” vs. No “You”
Making your subject line personal can be as simple as adding “you”. In this example, we tested two subject line copies with and without personal pronouns:

A/B Test Your Body Copy
Your email body copy is what convinces your prospects to take the next step in the sales conversion process. Write an email copy that connects, and you’ll get that coveted click-through. Write an email that flops, and you’re back to square one. You can pretty easily increase your ROI by taking the time and making the effort to test a few simple tweaks in your copy. 3 tops variables to test in your email body are:
- Text Only vs. Visual and Text
- Hard Sell vs. Soft Sell
- Personal vs. Formal
1. Text Only vs. Visual and Text
There’s good reason to send out emails with text only. Text only is easier to view on mobile – and 61% of brand emails are viewed on phones and tablets. There’s good reason to send out emails with visuals and text too. Visuals can make your email much more appealing. 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to carry more weight than product information or customer ratings. To get the best results, send out your A/B test to a large portion of your targeted email list – if not your entire list. Here’s a sample of results for our Text Only/ Visual and Text A/B test:
2. Hard Sell vs. Soft Sell
Write two email bodies. Make one a soft sell, with the goal to nurture your leads. Make one a hard sell, with the goal to gain immediate sales. For example, make one email to direct prospects to your content, and include a link to your sales funnel landing page too. Make one email to direct prospects directly to your sales funnel landing page. We tested the two and obtained the following results:
3. Tone A vs. Tone B
Another good A/B test for your body is your copy tone. If you have a diverse customer base, or you are targeting a variety of demographics, test out different colloquialisms and tone of voice to determine what gets you the best results for your campaign objectives. For the example, you could send out two emails, with two tones. For instance, your “A” copy could be what we determined best to use for this customer email segmentation: A (Control): “It’s 2014. How informed are you about the current state of social media? In this presentation we give you 15 statistics that might open your eyes about where you should focus your efforts in 2014 (and some that will just plain surprise you). These statistics are as current as they get, some of them only a couple days old. Check it out! Your “B” copy could be varied, such as: B (Variation): “Happy New Year. We know you’re very busy planning for the 2014 year. Wishpond is here to give your business what it needs. In our latest slideshare, we’ve collated the best – and most recent – social media statistics from around the web. Keep on top of the latest marketing trends. And be sure to sign up for our VIP Demo to find out how you can get better online marketing results.” Split your email list, and send the two copies to test which message gives you the best results.Additional Email A/B Testing
Now that you’ve gotten the hang of how to do email A/B testing, here’s a few more experiments you can run to increase your campaign results. See, I told you this was fun…
A/B test your Call To Action (CTA)
Your CTA is what invokes the important click through. Is your CTA the right offer? Does it give your recipients the action word? Would a difference in where your CTA is in the context of you email make a difference? Test your emails for these variations:- Action words (i.e. “Sign up” vs. “Book your Free demo”)
- Offer (i.e. “Coupon A” vs. “Coupon B” – create a coupon code A and a coupon code B to track results)
- CTA placement (i.e. “Top right corner” vs. “End of text”)
A/B test your time to send
You’ve likely found that your recipients respond better to your emails on certain days, and maybe even certain times of the day. Do all of your recipient segments respond the same? How about the results you get from your frequency of emails? Test your emails for these variations:- Day of week (i.e. “Tuesday” vs. “Friday”)
- Time of day (i.e. “9am” vs. “6pm” – and factor in any time differences your markets have)
- Frequency (i.e. “once a week” vs. “twice a week”)
Conclusion
A/B testing is an essential part of your email marketing and automation campaigns. Without bettering your email marketing metrics, you really are wasting your lead generation efforts. Take the time and smarts to test, test, test. You’ll get better email deliverability and achieve better results. For more reading on email marketing: Related Reading:
- The Complete Guide to Lead Segmentation
- Ultimate Email Deliverability Guide: 20 Ways to Improve Deliverability
- What is an Email Blast? How to Send Email Blasts (With Templates)
- 11 Email Marketing KPIs and Metrics You Should Be Tracking
- Email Bounce Backs – What Are They and How to Fix Them
- 7 Things To Test Before Sending An Email
- 6 Ways A No-Reply Email Address Hurts Your Business & How to Fix It