Don’t click Send until you do these four things

We’ve all felt it - that little tinge of fear in the back of our minds right after we click Send on an email blast. Your mind fills with all sorts of worries. “Did I make any typos?”

“Did I put the right image in?”

“Do all the links work?”

"Are they going to hate it?"

Here are four things you should do before you send another email. Trust me - you’ll feel a lot better about it:

1. Check all your written copy for typos. That includes your subject line, headline and body copy. Check all of it. Every word, every sentence. And then check it again just in case.

2. Make sure all your links work. You'd be surprised how easy it is to forget to update a link, especially if you're using an email template. Click every link in your email and make sure they send the reader where you want them to go.

3. Check your list. It's not uncommon to have more than one email list. Check to make sure you’re sending to the right audience.

4. Don’t sweat it. Even with multiple pairs of eyes and several rechecks on each email, mistakes still happen from time to time. So give yourself permission to experiment. Not every email can be a smash hit. Don't forget that learning what doesn’t work is just as useful as learning what does.

Click here for a complete email preflight checklist.

A/B Testing, Part 3: Testing Promos for Click-Throughs

Getting your audience to open your email is one thing. But how do you know if it lead to increased sales? Click-throughs are an important element of conversions. And they’re often one of the best ways to know if your email campaign was successful.

We’ve covered A/B testing for better email open rates. Now let’s talk about testing your click-through rate. There are many ways to A/B test your click-through rates. This month, we’ll cover promos.

If you’re running two or more similar promotions at the same time, you can swap them out in an A/B test to see which promo or brand generates more interest for your audience.

For example, Cabot, Valspar and Rust-Oleum Restore are all running a $10-off-per-gallon promo during May. Try switching out the product brands for an A/B test and see which brand lead to more click-throughs. Will Valspar be a bigger hit with your customers, or Cabot?

Of course, you can’t measure your click-through rate if you don’t have a link in your email for them to click. Make sure it links to something relevant. In the case of A/B testing promos, set up a landing page for the two brand promos you’re A/B testing and link to it in the email.

As always, make sure you track your results. By better knowing your audience, you'll get more engagement and more sales.

A/B Test Your Emails (Part 2)

Last time we covered A/B testing your subject lines to improve your email open rates. Today we’ll talk about another necessary key to open rates: Timing. What time of day and which day of the week that you send out your eblast can have a big impact on whether it gets opened or discarded by your customers.

Mail Chimp’s email metrics show that emails sent during the week get better open rates than emails sent during the weekend. Thursday and Friday had the highest open rates of the week. The metrics also show that emails sent late morning through early afternoon were more successful than emails sent first thing in the morning or in the evening. Between 9am and 2pm had the highest open rates of the week. You can read the full report here. 

Of course every audience is different. And what works for one brand’s audience might not work for another. You can use the above information as a good starting point for A/B testing different days and times to eblast. 

Try A/B testing the same email on different days of the week. Half your audience gets the email on one day, and the other half gets it on a different day. Use this information to pin down the best days of the week to eblast to your audience. You can do the same with time-of-say.

As always, make sure you track your results. By better knowing your audience, you'll get more engagement and more sales.

A/B Test Your Emails (Part 1)

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.