Good subject lines are hard enough to create. Coming up with subject lines that sell is even harder. It all depends on what appeals to your audience. By A/B testing your subject lines, you'll learn what works for your audience. You can use that knowledge to write subject lines that'll lead to higher open rates and more sales.
If you're not familiar with the term, A/B Testing simply means writing two different subject lines for an email, and then sending the email with one subject line to half your recipients and the other subject line to the other half. A week later, check your results and see which subject line got more opens. It's that simple.
There are other ways to A/B test your emails, but we'll focus on subject lines here.
Know What You're Testing
If you're just sending two different subject lines at random for each email, you're not going to learn as much as you could. First you need to decide what you want to learn about your audience. Here are some examples:
- Short vs long subject lines.
- Subject lines with numbers vs ones without numbers.
- Subject lines phrased as a question vs a statement.
- Adding a personalization or not.
Pick one of these to A/B test in your next email and track your results. By better knowing your audience, you'll get more engagement and more sales.