On average, less than 3% of all traffic coming to your website will convert to leads.

Lead generation is often one of the biggest priorities for marketers, but it can also be their biggest challenge. According to Klipfolio, an average of 2.4% of visitors make the jump to convert. So how can you boost this number?

Experimentation is the answer. Testing and discovering what works best to encourage your audience to engage is an essential part of building customer-centric, lead-generating digital experiences.

To help you get started turning passive visitors into qualified leads, we gathered 8 experience optimization test ideas from AB Tasty clients that you can use to boost conversions and drive better engagement with your audience.

Don’t miss out on potential leads!

LEAD GEN TEST IDEA360Learning simplifies the navigation bar to better direct visitorsThe team at 360Learning wanted to improve the user experience on their homepage to drive more leads. An A/B test was created for the main navigation bar where a simplified version competed against the original, busier version. The results? With fewer distractions, the simplified navigation bar lead to clicks on “Request a Demo” soaring by 60%.

Stop letting potential leads click away

Grab your copy of “The Lead Gen Playbook” and start testing today.

The post The Lead Gen Playbook appeared first on abtasty.

Whether you’re in B2B or B2C marketing, it’s no secret that email marketing is a super effective way to communicate with your customers on your terms.

In fact, according to EMarketer, 80% of retail professionals quote email marketing as their greatest driver of customer retention.

However, email marketing has evolved so much over the years.

In order to connect with your customers, increase sales, onboard customers, move buyers down the purchasing funnel, or achieve other goals,  you have to get personal.

Consumers want personalized content; therefore, they’re likely to react better to all personalized forms of communication – specifically, email remarketing campaigns.

In other words, email remarketing campaigns are a great resource for you to connect with your consumer and generate more revenue.

Email remarketing defined

Similar to retargeted ads, email retargeting campaigns use behavioral and action-based information to help tailor personalized email campaigns. However, email retargeting can also be used to generate retargeted ads on social media and display networks.

Now let’s discuss why you should use email remarketing.

Why you should start email remarketing

Email remarketing campaigns allow marketers to produce highly targeted, highly converting campaigns.

Because they work on the same principles found in retargeted ads, email remarketing can achieve better marketing results compared to traditional digital advertising like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords campaigns.

Let’s see what email remarketing can do.

1. Re-engage your customers

Let’s take a look at a typical situation: Most visitors visit one or two product pages before leaving your website altogether.

So, how can you re-engage these visitors?

Email remarketing can use tracked information to display relevant ads in emails. You can re-engage visitors by showing them special offers related to the product they just saw.

If used wisely, email retargeting helps your company re-engage inactive customers and increase customer retention among active users.

2. Achieve better clickthrough rates

Email remarketing allows for personalized and relevant ads.

According to data collected by SuperOffice, emails that are segmented, or targeted to a specific group of people, perform almost 40% better than a general email.

Imagine what you could do with a 40% increase in your open rate.

3. Drive more sales

With increased clickthrough rates and more chances to convert, your retargeted customers are likely to bring in more revenue for your company.

In fact, Hal Open Science reports that email remarketing conversions can help you increase your overall conversions by 10%.

That’s because your campaigns target just the right person at the right time.

4. Reduce shopping cart abandonment

One could say that email remarketing was basically invented to reduce cart abandonment.

According to the Baymard Institute, nearly 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. Email remarketing is a huge opportunity to remind shoppers of what they’ve been browsing and to recover this “lost sale.”

At the same time as you remind your customers about their desired products, email remarketing produces a fear of missing out (FOMO) effect. Your customer will feel light pressure as this might just be their last chance to buy that product at a discounted price.

5 examples of email remarketing campaigns

1. FOODPANDA: FoodTech

FoodPanda knows that hunger cannot wait. In the image above you can see that they retarget with two magical words: “FREE+DELIVERY”

A simple free delivery offer could be all it takes to convince your customer to try a new restaurant that they’re already been looking at.

2. DUOLINGO: EducationalTech

Duolingo, a language-learning app, applies a different approach in its remarketing campaign: emotion.

If you haven’t used the app recently, they let you know that you haven’t been seen in a while and that it’s time to get back on track with your learning.

They even take it to another level by mentioning that you’ve made Duo the owl, the face of their app, sad because of your absence.

This is a great way to apply human emotion to a remarketing campaign to re-engage users.

3. DEBENHAMS: Fashion

In Debenhams’ email remarketing campaign, they point out items a customer was browsing but that they haven’t added to their cart.

This email also includes enticing CTAs for buyers: FREE next-day click & collect and fuss-free returns. What more could you ask for?

Interestingly enough, this email doesn’t mention the customer’s name, but it still feels personal as it is targeted directly at customers viewing the product.

4. NIKE: Sportswear

In a similar fashion, Nike triggers a retargeted email after you’ve left some items in your cart.

While they don’t display your abandoned items, they insist on having you talk with a sales representative over the phone or through their online chat.

Finally, they also heavily highlight their “FREE SHIPPING – FREE RETURNS” policy in order to convince undecided customers.

This is especially important to highlight considering that shipping cost is one of the main reasons for cart abandonment.

5. FRESHBOOOKS: Saas

Want to retarget your own customers to upgrade to a new plan? Take a look at FreshBooks’ email campaign as an example.

With 19 days left in a free trial, they offer 60% off any plan for your upgrade. This not only entices the user with a discount but also reminds them that this offer is time sensitive according to how much of their free trial they have used.

Email retargeting best practices

Now that you have a few examples to start your retargeting campaigns, here are some best practices to keep in mind while you set them up.

• Timing is everything: The sooner you can start your campaigns, the better. If you contact website visitors shortly after they’ve clicked off your page, they’ll be more likely to return and reconsider your products/services.
• Keep it relevant: To be sure you’re targeting the right users, email segmentation is the best way to go. Segmentation is the process of separating the subscribers in your email list into smaller groups. This will help you be sure that you’re sending the right emails to the right people.
• A/B test your campaigns: An A/B test will compare two versions of your email to test which one produces the best results. After a few tests, your team should start to identify trends and common patterns that lead to higher open and click-through rates.

Whether you’re looking to personalize your email content to capture customer attention or A/B test your subject lines to determine the best-performing phrase, choosing the right software will help you transform your ideas into reality.

AB Tasty is the complete experience optimization platform to help you create a richer digital experience for your customers — fast. From email remarketing to A/B testing your subject lines, this solution can help you achieve personalization with ease.

Connect with your website visitors

Whether an email remarketing campaign will be a new tactic for your team or you’re looking for some best practices to employ, these campaign examples will change the way you communicate with your consumers.

Relevant and personalized content sent at just the right time is key to generating more revenue with your email campaigns.

The post 5 Examples of Email Remarketing Campaigns to Get Inspiration From appeared first on abtasty.

To give you some perspective, 35% of email recipients open emails based on subject lines alone according to HubSpot, and 21% of subscribers mark boring ones as spam, even if they know they aren’t. 

In other words, customers are tough to impress. 

If you really want to get noticed and prove you are deserving of their time and attention, supercharge your email subject lines with emotion. Because in the end, no matter how much we rationalize, our buying decisions spring from our emotions. 

Read more: Creating Emotional Connections with Customers Using Data

Think of what a customer fears, dreams of, desires and wants in a product or solution. Use that as a premise of your subject lines to trigger an emotional response. 

Some fashion and beauty brands have already been doing consistently well in this area. It’s time you learn the ropes from them.

Fair warning: It’s not a good idea to rely on emotions alone. The purpose of retail brands, like yours, is to sell. So hit a variety of customer touchpoints, including sending personalized emails, because they are 26% more likely to be opened than those without. Even better, they deliver 6X higher transaction rates.

Anyway, let’s dive in…

Email subject lines that induce FOMO

What does FOMO mean? Fear of missing out.

No one likes missing out on time-sensitive deals, including you. Just think of the last time you jumped on an offer because you didn’t want to regret losing out on a good bargain. 

In another case, imagine a time when you felt some stress for not having bought something when there was still time, stock, and a good deal. 

The same emotional reaction happens to your customers. Whether it’s creating a top-notch holiday campaign, announcing a limited time or a limited stock sale, pick the right set of words like ‘last chance, ‘don’t miss…’, to create urgency. Seeing such offers immediately activates this fear of missing out and drives them to act right away. 

It’s exactly why this email from The North Face displays. The simple nudge is enough to get their recipient to grab this one– the last chance to save some money.

Examples of FOMO-provoking email subject lines:

Limited time offer:

• Alice & Olivia: LAST.DAY.DROP.EVERYTHING.
• Dropps: Get 15% off, but move quick.
• UNIQLO: TICK TOCK! Free shipping ends tonight
• Mango: LAST FEW HOURS to enjoy 30% off the entire collection!

Show it’s in demand: 

• Nykaa: These will sell out in 3…2..
• Sorel: These stunners are selling out fast
• Olay: Get it before it’s gone!
• Marc Jacobs: New to sale and going fast

Imply negative outcomes: 

• Nykaa: You snooze, you lose.
• Revolve: Say goodbye to 65% off
• UNIQLO: Get it before it’s gone
• Nike: Good stuff in your cart…checking out > missing out

More ideas:

• You’ve still got time
• Offer expires tonight
• The stock’s running out
• UH-oh. Your fav styles are (almost) gone
• ATTN: This pack will DEFINITELY sell out
• Saying goodbye is the toughest
• Our top 10 at 10% off for the next 24 hours
• LAST chance to save up to $55
• <New product> is selling like hot cakes
• You’ve ONE day left: FREE shipping +20% off
• Tonight only: Your wish list items on sale
• LIMITED-time offer on items on your wishlist

Email subject lines that drive curiosity

Can you guess what makes crime drama series binge-worthy? Why we click intriguing Upworthy and BuzzFeed posts? Or why we can’t stop reading novels? Blame our inherent need to close the loop between what we know and what we want to know. Otherwise known as – our curiosity!

This is also exactly why when people receive emails with partial information in the subject lines, they feel the urgent need to click ‘open.’ 

A perfect example is this email from Nykaa. This cliffhanger technique adds a touch of drama and mystery that is enough to tempt people to see what’s on the other side.

Examples of using curiosity in subject lines: 

• Huckberry: “Want” — everyone
• Michael Kors: Give us an inch…
• J.Crew: The shorts circuit
• TwoThirds: Meet our unique pieces!
• Revolve Tomorrow’s outfit forecast
• Kate Spade: You’re getting sleepy…
• Steve Madden: TORNADO warning
• Anthropologie: Let us per-SUEDE you.
• Birchbox: We’ve got some ideas for you.
• Sephora: Because you need these.
• Estée Lauder Online: Why’s everyone obsessed with retinol?
• Jimmy Choo: Dreams are made up of these + complimentary global shipping

More ideas:

• Not even in your wildest dreams would…
• Got a sec? Open this email right away, or…
• FIRST time ever on sale
• New launches inside
• Is THIS what you’ve been waiting for?
• You DESERVE this
• Don’t buy from us…
• Before you regret not buying your favs
• Saying goodbye is the toughest
• Did we tell you that…
• This is personal…

How to personalize and test subject lines to maximize your open rate

By crafting a personalized email with your customer’s name or a point of interest in the subject line, you’re ensuring a connection with your customer.

According to Forbes, 72% of customers ONLY interact with personalized messaging.

Personalization is an important way to build trust with your customer and maintain your relationship with them before, during, and after their purchases. If you’re not using personalization in your email campaigns, you’re likely missing out on a huge opportunity. 

Whether you’re looking to personalize your email content to capture customer attention or A/B test your subject lines to determine the best-performing phrase, choosing the right software will help you transform your ideas into reality.

AB Tasty is the complete experience optimization platform to help you create a richer digital experience for your customers — fast. From recommendations to smart search, this solution can help you achieve personalization with ease, experiment with a low-code implementation and revolutionize your brand and product experiences.

Email subject lines that spark happiness

Since you already occupy a sacred space in your customers’ inboxes, why not become a reason for their happiness?

A lot of things make people happy. So right from using humor, wordplay, solving people’s problems, appealing to their vanity, surprising them with freebies and special offers to reminding them there’s good in them. For example, if you can relate their shopping efforts to contributing to a social cause, that’s one idea of reminding them there’s good inside.  There are plenty of ideas that you can use to really catch their eyes and make them feel unique.

This email from Fortress of Inca, for example, plays the vanity card. Honest confession: I was at the receiving end and I had to open the email because my fabulous choice in shoes was being appreciated!

Examples of subject lines focusing on happiness:

• Pura Vida: Save the Amazon Rainforest!
• Michael Kors: FOOD IS LOVE: Help Us Watch Hunger Stop
• Sephora: Your beauty issues solved
• Nicole Miller: Button me up, Button me down.
• Alice & Olivia: Hot date? We’ve got you.
• J.Crew: We don’t do this (MAJOR) sale too often…
• JustFab: Your FREE money is waiting. We put $30 in your account.
• Pura Vida: Happy birthday to us (gifts for you!)
• DSW: Find out how you can make a difference.
• Patagonia: School lunch made easy
• The North Face: 5 jackets that will have everyone saying…where’d you get them from!

More ideas: 

• Our birthday treat = gifts for you!
• Giving > Getting
• It’s true…these will look dapper on you
• What to wear for the New Year’s bash
• Style secrets you can master in under 10 minutes
• Your winter break packing list is HERE!
• You’re one click away from shopping complete spring look
• Impressed by items in your card: Buy ‘em before they’re gone
• You earned what’s INSIDE this email

Email subject lines that create excitement

So far we’ve already established that humans are emotional creatures. Let’s now use excitement to get your sales meter ticking, because chances are that it results in impulse shopping.

Selling to customers is much easier when they’re excited and in touch with their emotions. In a state of excitement, your level of enthusiasm brings you to think and behave differently.

There are a number of ways to get the excitement level up. You can start by highlighting the exclusiveness of your offer, adding social proof (drop names and numbers), capitalizing action verbs to motivate action completion and even using emojis and exclamation marks.

In the email subject line below, team Pura Vida does two things — attract attention and excite the subscriber with the clever use of an emoji, the word ‘holy smokes,’ and a few ‘!

Examples of Building Excitement in Subject Lines:

• J.Crew: What Adam Scott thinks of our suits
• Anthropologie: Just for you: the inside scoop
• Pura Vida: Special offer (but only for our BFFs)
• Olay: Over 50 million sold
• Sorel: Meet our exclusive Frozen 2 boots
• DSW: Reviewers have spoken: “BEST BOOTIE EVER!”
• Steve Madden: Take our shoe stylists’ word for it
• Meundies: Well, this is exciting!
• Adidas: You’re in. Welcome to Adidas
• Revolve: This collab was made for you
• theBalm Cosmetics: Welcome to #THEBALMERS community!
• Victoria’s Secret: 60% off bras & apparels, in stores only! GO, GO, GO!

More ideas: 

• Beyonce-approved autumn wear you can’t say no to
• Sweet launch discount (for members only!)
• Howdie! Your faves are back in stock
• Sshh…you’re the FIRST ONE to be seeing this
• It’s between you and us ONLY
• For your eyes only, because you wanted it
• Baby, it’s baccccck!
• It’s your birthday! Get 30% off, a FREE gift and free shipping.

Ready to Craft Email Subject Lines That Deliver?

Full disclaimer: It takes a lot of A/B testing and patience to come up with subject lines that stay within the 40-50 characters limit and stir the right emotions. Thankfully,  now you’re aware of which emotions to go after and how to invoke emotional decision-making.

So it’s time to get to work! But before you go, and for maximum impact, keep these equally important things in mind:

• Match your brand personality with the tone of voice of your subject lines.
• Segment your audience to send targeted/personalized emails.
• A/B test your email send times.

The post 52 Email Subject Lines That Work From Fashion and Beauty Brands appeared first on abtasty.

As a marketer, your job is to ensure that your emails stand out from the other 120.

Adding a video into your emails can increase click-through rates, conversions, brand awareness, and help educate your customers.

In fact, including a video in an email can lead to open rate increases of up to 13%.

Videos are engaging, entertaining, and allow you to quickly and effectively communicate with your audience.

Why Use Videos in Email Marketing?

If you’re not yet convinced, check out these six key benefits of video in email marketing for your business.

#1 Increase Conversion and Click-Through Rates

The effect of video on conversion and click-through rates in your emails is impressive.

Take a moment to consider these statistics:

• An email including a video can increase your email click-through rate by up to 300%
• An email including a video can reduce your unsubscribe rate by 75%
• Emails including a video have been found to have a 96% higher click-through rate than those without

If you had any doubts that video is an important part of your marketing arsenal, those stats should squash them.

#2 Increase Email Open Rates

Remarkably, studies have found that just including the word “video” is enough to increase email open rates — by a whopping 7% to 13%.

Why?

Because people are naturally curious. 

As well as simply conveying the core message of the email, adding “video” to the subject line piques a reader’s interest, compelling them to open the email.

Simply put, they want to know what’s in the video.

#3 Build Trust and Authenticity

Using videos is a great way to build trust and to establish a connection with your audience.

It puts a face and a personality to your brand, allowing your audience to get a feel for the person or team it is dealing with.

You can establish trust by sharing tips, insight into your business operations, or just fun videos to build rapport. It’s also a great way to warm up your audience to a product or service.

To build trust using videos, consider implementing the following tips:

• Have the same person present the videos consistently: Over time your audience will start to feel like they know that person. This helps to establish a personal connection to and trust of your brand.

• Create useful and free video content for your target audience: You’re perceived as a credible and authoritative expert in your industry, which builds deeper trust and creates a (future) desire to pay for your expertise.

• Create videos that show positive and negative brand experiences:  Consider using personal stories or a sneak peek of your office. Be genuine and human and you’ll earn people’s respect and trust.

#4 Social Media Shares and Boosts to SEO

A huge bonus of using video email marketing is its indirect effect on your search engine rankings.

Videos that are engaging are highly likely to be shared on social media. In fact, videos generate 12 times more social shares than both text and images.

This increases your social engagement, which in turn boosts your brand in the search engines.

While social media engagement itself is not a ranking factor for Google (it is for Bing, however), it does amplify other ranking factors that Google does use.

Social sharing increases the visibility of your content. The more people that view your content, the more likely it is to get shares.

Links are hugely important for SEO.

#5 Timesaving

Nowadays people live busy (and distracted) lives. Plenty of people would rather watch a one-minute video than spend 15 minutes reading a long-form article.

A benefit of videos is that they can quickly and easily get across your core message and grab the attention of viewers. Even complex subjects can be made easier to understand.

Videos are more interesting and engaging (when compared to text alone) and can have a bigger impact on your readers.

Videos can go viral quickly and viewers respond more positively to a product after watching related videos.

#6 Stay Out of the Trash

There’s nothing worse than spending hours of your valuable time building an email campaign for it not to be read, chucked unceremoniously in the trash, or worse still, marked as spam.

Luckily, good-quality, interesting, and engaging videos capture the attention of the reader and reduce the likelihood that your email will go straight into the trash.

When done well, it’s also a valuable opportunity to give an excellent impression of your service or product.

How to Incorporate Video Content into Emails

Now you know the benefits of using videos in your emails, here’s how to add videos to your email marketing campaigns.

Technique 1: Embed Videos into Emails

You can embed videos directly into emails.

The reader should be able to view a playing video without leaving their inbox, which, in theory, sounds like a great user experience.

But despite the fact this technology has been around since the ‘90s, videos embedded into emails come with a host of serious flaws.

• Due to spam and security precautions, many email clients do not support embedded videos.
• Not all email clients (even the big guys like Gmail, Hotmail, or Outlook) can support the more recent video format, HTML5.

In other words, when you embed a video directly into an email, there’s a chance that the reader won’t be able to view it as you intended.

Does that mean you should abandon using videos in your emails? No, the benefits of using them are too high.

Rather, you need to use a technique that is guaranteed to work, every time.

Technique 2: Use a Video Thumbnail Image

To counter the inherent downsides of videos embedded into emails, marketers often use a video thumbnail image within the email which links to a landing page where the video lives.

Inside the email, create an image that looks like a video. When the image is clicked the reader is taken to your website or YouTube to view the video.

The video isn’t hosted in the email, which actually comes with some powerful benefits:

• The video will definitely work (unlike Technique 1)
• The video can be set to autoplay on YouTube or your website, meaning as soon as the user clicks the video, it plays
• More traffic is converted from your email to your website, meaning more page views and more website interactions
• By adding CTAs on the video landing page, you can move the reader through the sales funnel

Types of Video Email Marketing Campaigns

Data shows that video in email is effective and hosting a video on YouTube or your website is so easy to set up, what are you waiting for?

Here are some effective ways to start incorporating more video content into your marketing emails today.

Personalized Emails for Sales

Creating personalized videos is an excellent way for sales teams to convert leads. Plus, with tools like Wistia, it only takes a minute or two to record, edit, and send a video.

Wistia’s Google Chrome extension allows you to record your screen and yourself at the same time, edit the video, and then easily send it over to your customer or prospect.

You can add a personal greeting to the recipient, allowing you to personalize your sales efforts and significantly increase your response rates.

Plus, with companies finding a 36.9% higher close rate when using personalized videos with email, it’s got to be worth a try.

Use Videos to Tell Customer Stories

Take a moment to consider what is more genuine:

• your brand telling a customer why they should buy, or
• a customer talking about their positive experience with the brand.

It’s a no-brainer. Potential customers are far more likely to trust customers than the brand itself.

Some 76% of people believe that content posted by customers is more trustworthy than brand content.

Using an existing customer to explain their experience on video is an excellent way to sell your services or products. It’s genuine, personal, and highly trustworthy.

To increase conversion rates, go one step further and include these videos in your email marketing campaigns.

Consider Using GIFs As Well As Videos

In general, videos perform best when they are short and sweet.

Consider your audience and your product or service. Is your audience younger and tech savvy?

If so, it could be worth considering using a short GIF instead of a full-blown video.

GIFs are easy to insert into emails, quicker than videos to make, and can be equally engaging.

Consider these questions before adding GIFs to your campaigns:

• Does it reinforce your message?
• Does it highlight the most important parts of your email?
• Does it emphasize the features of your product or service?
• Does it add some fun or excitement to your message?
• Does it offend your audience?

If you do decide to use GIFs, make sure you don’t overdo it. They can be distracting and annoying, so a general rule of thumb is to only include one or two per email.

In the example below, the GIF makes the email design more interesting, grabs the attention of the reader, and delivers emotions in a more personal way.

Over to You

Now we’d like to hear from you.

Are you going to use embedded videos or send readers to your website?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment right now.

If you want to learn more about using video for marketing, head over to our blog, 7 Ways To Make Your Testimonials More Persuasive.

The post How and Why to Use Video in Your Email Marketing in 2023 appeared first on abtasty.

Babymarkt.de regularly sends out category-based newsletters to customers 20 days after they made a purchase in the online shop. The corresponding products for the product recommendations in each category were manually assigned to the customer segments which was well-received but required a lot of effort.

In a bid to personalize their newsletter to the child’s age, the company turned to AB Tasty to help them generate a knowledge base based on artificial intelligence to make more relevant recommendations.

A comparison of the click rate and the email marketing revenue of the category-based newsletter showed a clear result.

The post Babymarkt.de boosts click rate with personalized product recommendations appeared first on abtasty.

Whilst they may not have directly agreed to hear from the company, they have registered interest and willingly given contact information.

Opt-out email marketing is when contact details are automatically added to a marketing list that a subscriber may be unaware of until they receive communications. Whilst this can be a bit of a nuisance for the person receiving the email, it can be another great way of gaining quality leads.

Despite a growing rumbling that email marketing is in decline, between 2014 and 2018, it was estimated that the average office worker in the US sent around 90 emails, with 40 emails being about business in particular. This strongly indicates that reaching people by electronic mail is still by far the preferred method for most people around the world.

The new approach of using opt-in call-to-actions on websites to obtain email addresses has become an increasingly successful way to gather high-quality contact lists to target with marketing campaigns. With open rates for marketing emails remaining around 85% and click-through rates at around 25% for most industries, email marketing is far from dwindling as a successful marketing tool.

When utilized properly, both opt-in and opt-out emails are a great use of your marketing budget and time, with significant click-through rates and growth in new subscribers credited to opt-in techniques.

We explore the difference between executing these tactics and offer some guidance when it comes to running a successful opt-in email marketing campaign.

Opt-in vs. Opt-out; Which is Best?

So, what is the difference between opting in to receive marketing emails and opting out of communications – and where does the term ‘unsubscribe’ fit into email marketing tactics?

The concept of opt-in emails is a straightforward marketing approach; you reach out to people who have given their contact details via a website sign-up. The opt-in method is rapidly becoming a popular option, as companies build a solid list of contacts directly from users on their website, instead of relying on the more traditional approach of buying a list of potentially relevant contacts.

Opt-out email marketing is slightly more tricky when it comes to maintaining interest, particularly for timely offers, as many recipients lose interest on receiving initial communications and this can sometimes lead to people hitting the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ button – not ideal.

Using opt-in email marketing is the perfect opportunity to captivate and nurture initial leads, as someone has shown an interest in your company or product. It is then up to your excellent marketing campaign to be compelling, well-written and generally engaging enough that those potential customers become fully-fledged revenue for your business.

The Advantages of Using Opt-In Email Marketing

Compared to opt-out marketing, opt-in offers additional confidence to many brands, as the people receiving email marketing have expressed interest in the company or products. Building a strong, quality marketing list via ‘opt-in’ has become a more secure way for businesses to visibly see a return on investment, via their e-marketing.

Another advantage of using opt-in marketing is the years of consistently high open rates for companies all over the world, compared to it’s ‘younger cousin’, social media marketing. Brands try alternative methods of directly reaching potential new customers on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, by sending direct messages about discounts and offers that they assume their followers would be interested in. The results, however, indicate people simply are not ready to be contacted directly on their personal social accounts, with a measly 0.58% open rate for direct messaging.

A slightly less interesting but sensible advantage for opt-in emails is that they are also regulated, in a bid to protect people’s data when it comes to how companies store and use it. Which leads us on to the topic of regulation…

What is GDPR?

Ah, legal regulations. They may have all the appeal of a soggy sandwich, but they have recently become an important guideline for companies operating in the EU when it comes to storing and using people’s contact information. May 2018 saw the rollout of GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation, and was put in place to protect personal data, particularly when companies build marketing lists with the intention to reach out. Similar to the GDPR roll out, companies operating in the United States have to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, brought in by George Bush in 2003, to protect individuals from receiving marketing communications they didn’t opt-in for.

Whilst they may be rather dull, regulations have been introduced to protect both companies and recipients from having their details misused. As previously touched upon, when sending any type of communication to someone, there is a certain level of consent that the recipient will exercise. They will either choose to opt-in to hearing from you (via a sign-up), or they can be unknowingly added to a list and contacted because they have shown an interest in a third-party or related company. Ultimately, all of these methods involve storing and using someone’s personal contact details.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with building an email list via opt-in or opt-out marketing methods, email consent has come under scrutiny in the last few years.  Regulation has become an even bigger requirement to prevent the misuse of data, since many a company have recently suffered security breaches, with customer details being stolen.

Double Opt-In and Nurturing Leads

The double opt-in option requires a further ‘click’ via a link sent in another communication, such as an email or text message. This additional click-through confirms their interest in your company and that they want to hear from you, making them far more likely to convert and respond to your communications. The double opt-in is not necessarily right for every email campaign, but rather offers extra security for companies looking for a great-quality contact list.

By sending a confirmation message, you begin to nurture a lead, reassuring both yourself and the email recipient that they are interested in receiving information and offers from your company. Once they have gone through the effort of re-confirming, it is down to the quality of the marketing material to reach the ultimate goal of converting them to becoming a customer.

The double opt-in method is great for companies who offer coupons and other discounts that may be exclusive to subscribers, and it also avoids any emails being sent to spam folders. If an email list is not primarily focused on offers etc, the single opt-in option is fine. As long as your business offers some kind of opt-in email marketing, your correspondence list will stay clean and secure.

From a regulation point of view, the double opt-in is the ‘belt and braces’ approach – it ensures the contact is compliant and willing to be contacted.

Timing is Everything When Sending Emails

As with many things in life, timing is everything when it comes to sending campaign emails – and reaping the reward. Depending on whether you target B2B or B2C audiences, the day of the week will affect the open rate success. Tuesday is widely known as being the best day to send B2B newsletters and general marketing communications, whereas B2C companies find Saturday morning a great time to achieve excellent open rates. Then there’s the actual time of day your email is received. Avoid any time that is widely considered busy, for example, 9am is a big no, but anything between 12-2pm is highly likely to be seen.

Avoid the Spam Folder

Email providers such as Gmail and Microsoft have spent many years developing algorithms when it comes to spotting ‘spammy’ words in an email, making sure to automatically file any potential spam emails away, without the user even knowing they are there. The key to avoiding this ‘automatic filing’ is to send good, well-written content. Inform your reader of the topic straight away, avoid using words such as ‘buy’, ‘spam’ or ‘free’ in your subject header and try not to overwhelm them with lots of imagery, once they have opened your email.

Takeaway

Ultimately, the level of success from your email marketing campaign is going to depend on many factors, such as quality of content, the time of day it’s sent as well as the quality of contacts it is sent to. Despite the pesky rumors stating email marketing is dead or on the way out, the stats simply prove otherwise. Above the noise of social advertising, clever cookie options and other tried-and-tested digital methods, opt-in email marketing remains the most successful campaign tactic, with the Independent Department of Marketing Bureau, or IMDB fully endorsing it as the most successful way to communicate with potential customers, in 2019.

Feature Image Credit from HostReviews.

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However, in our era of over-saturated email boxes, chances are your prospects won’t actually open your emails as they receive so many.

On average, MailChimp estimates that open rates vary from 18% to 28% depending on the industry concerned. While it’s not catastrophic, it still means that 75% to 80% of your emails will remain… unopened.

Let’s be honest: there is not a single magic formula to craft the perfect email. Otherwise, it would have largely spread over the internet and become overused in a matter of weeks.

The truth is, no one can really guess the perfect email campaign for your company – it will depend on a myriad of factors that we will cover later in this article.

As a consequence, the only way to design and write the most effective emails is to A/B test them.

Not just once, but many times.

By doing so, you’ll vastly increase your chances of uncovering magic tricks that will effectively increase your open, click-through and response rates.

Using email A/B testing, you’ll also discover what actually works on your prospects and how to address them.

Without further ado, let’s begin this guide by answering one simple question:

Why does email A/B testing matter?

Despite being one of the oldest online marketing channels, email marketing remains one of the top performing solutions to reach a broad audience and convert prospects into leads or clients.

More importantly, emailing is a marketing channel that is both:

• Highly profitable
• Often affordable

As you can see, email marketing returns an average of $40 for every dollar spent, which is a massive improvement compared to display campaigns or banner ads for instance.

Knowing that email marketing is profitable, let’s see how email A/B testing will truly help your business:

It will improve your open and click-through rates

After a few A/B tests, your company should start to identify trends and common factors that lead to higher open and click-through rates.

This means that you will get more views but also more clicks to your website or online forms, which leads us to our second point.

It will increase conversions and generate revenues

Using a marketing automation software, you will be able to analyze your funnel and traffic sources, which is crucial to identifying how many opened emails actually resulted in leads or sales.

Knowing that, you will get a precise estimation of your email marketing ROI, which is a good start to further increase conversions and revenues.

From there, it’s up to you to conduct additional tests on your email campaigns in order to generate more revenues.

You will know what works for your audience

As we said in our introduction, not all industries are identical when it comes to email statistics.

Meanwhile, your prospects most likely have special needs and questions that need to be addressed in a specific way – which most marketers won’t be able to do on the first try.

After you’ve conducted a few conclusive tests, you’ll soon discover major differentiating factors that will account for your future email marketing campaigns success.

Using A/B tests, you’ll be able to craft tailor-made emails that will fit your prospects and generate more engagement.

You will save time and money

Although email marketing isn’t the most expensive online channel, it does cost a significant amount of money to send emails to a large audience and create adapted visuals, landing pages and forms.

Using email A/B tests, you’ll save time and money by quickly identifying the recipe for success in your given industry and by implementing incremental changes that will lead to better results.

What elements should I A/B test first in my emails?

At this point, you’re probably wondering how to set up a proper email A/B test and start gaining insights on what works and what doesn’t.

In order to help you do so, we’ve prepared a list of the 8 most important elements that could lead to significant improvements for your email campaigns.

Ready?

Subject & Preheader

Subjects lines and preheaders form the only touch point before an email is opened.

Therefore, they’re highly valuable items that require extensive attention despite their size.

Remember: your headlines and preheaders will determine whether or not your emails will be opened.

On average, optimal length for email subject lines is around 60-70 characters, no more.

You could try to tweak several parameters for your subject lines, including:

• Word order (try reversing the order)
• Tone (neutral, friendly, provocative)
• Length (try shorter, try longer)
• Personalization (try including their first name)

When it comes to preheaders, they’re usually pulled from the first line of your email. But as your email marketing senses sharpen, you could try to create intentional preheaders that most emailing tools now support.

If you can create your own preheaders, try to write complementary information and add relevant words that could trigger your prospects’ curiosity.

Different days and hours

For various reasons, email campaigns don’t perform the same depending on when you send them.

For starters, you could try to send emails on different days of the week: GetResponse reports that Tuesdays get the best open rates compared to the rest of the week, although the gap is relatively small (19.9% for Tuesdays compared to 16.9 on Saturdays).

Because studies can be biased and cultural differences can change this data, it’s important that you try different days in order to find what works best for your company.

Likewise, there are studies like MailChimp’s and HubSpot’s that tend to show a particular trend for optimal sending time around 10am to 11am.

Knowing this, you could try to adjust your campaign around different hours of the day just to see if one performs better than the others.

Length

The length of your email’s body can have a significant impact on your readers’ behavior, depending on what they have been used to.

With several studies all reporting serious decreases in our attention span, it may be worth deleting one or two paragraphs just to see if your email performs better.

One general piece of advice is to be straightforward and cut out the unnecessary, overused commercial taglines.

Of course, your emails’ ideal body length will mostly depend on your prospects’ expectations and your industry’s emailing practices.

In the fashion industry, the trend is moving towards flashy, punchy visuals with minimal copy that often features a very basic call-to-action.

On the contrary, B2B emails can purposely be long and feature bullet lists as well as multiple call-to-actions.

Visuals

Since our brain just loves visuals (read full study here), adding engaging visuals to your emails can be a very powerful tool to generate more engagement from your readers.

Similarly to body length, visuals won’t show the same efficiency in all industries.

In fact, adding too many visuals can distract readers from the core message which often leads to having your call-to-actions ignored.

If you want to get a clear idea on whether or not images are adapted to your email marketing efforts, just try to run a Version A with no visuals (but the same subject line, body and CTAs) versus a Version B that contains visuals: you’ll see which one performs better.

Getting more personal

Adopting a friendlier, more casual tone and copy can often transform the way your readers perceive your email activities.

Using most recent emailing tools, you can dynamically add first and last names inside your emails: this will create a sense of personalization that most people like.

The copy

While there is no secret recipe to writing perfect copy (because it depends on your objectives), try running different versions through A/B tests while only changing the copy: this could lead to tremendous changes for your conversion rate.

If you’ve formulated different hypotheses about your readers’ expectations, create two different copies based on anticipated behaviors and send them to the same mailing list to see which one outperforms the other.

Call-to-actions & buttons

Whether they’re hypertext, images or buttons, your CTAs’ design and copy can have serious consequences on your readers’ likeliness to click them.

If you want to conduct in-depth CTAs A/B testing, try to compare different colors and formats to see if one stands out from the rest.

If that doesn’t deliver statistically significant results, you could try to change your value proposition; i.e the offer behind your call-to-action.

The best practices for email A/B testing

Now that we covered the main elements that can be tested through email A/B testing, let’s have a quick look at the 4 best practices to bear in mind before running email A/B tests.

Having a goal in mind

Defining objectives prior to running any A/B tests is a massive time-saver for any marketer.

In fact, it’s highly important that we as marketers formulate hypotheses based on the data we exploit.

• You need to increase the open rate: In this case, you should mainly focus on your subject lines and preheaders: these are the two main elements that will affect this metric.
• You need to increase your click-through-rate, downloads or subscriptions: If you want to increase engagement, then test all body-related content such as the copy, the tone, the visuals and the call-to-actions as they may all trigger an increase in clicks, subscriptions or purchases.

One vs Multiple Variables Testing

When it comes to A/B testing, adding multiple variables in your tests means that you will need an ever-increasing sample size in order to get statistically relevant results.

Besides, comparing two versions with multiple variants each will make it difficult for you to get relevant results as you won’t know which element triggered an increase or a decrease for your key metric.

If you have a small sample size, our general advice is to test one variable at a time.

However, there are cases where you will want to A/B test two completely different versions of your email: you can do so easily as the “winner” could be used for future benchmarks or as a template for your next A/B tests.

Testing at the same time vs testing at different times

Although you can absolutely A/B test your emails based on sending days and hours, try to avoid sending variants at different times: you won’t know if the changes were caused by the time or the email content.

Tracking results and building on your findings

Running email A/B tests makes no sense if you don’t actively track your campaigns results afterwards.

There are 4 main metrics that should you track in order to measure success:

• Open Rate
• Click-through Rate
• Response Rate
• Subsequent Conversion Rate

For most campaigns, open rates and click-through rates will be your basic performance indicators and you should track any sensible change, be it positive or negative.

On certain campaigns (namely lead generation and ecommerce promotional offers), you’ll also want to actively track the conversion rate associated with your call-to-action.

Simply put, you should track sales or the number of forms completed on your website derived from your email analytics in order to measure your overall return on investment.

In these scenarios, you’ll be tracking real conversions instead of the number of opened emails which will provide you with much more tangible data for your marketing analysis.

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