Testing is a proven method to increase ROI of email campaigns. As Anne Holland stated in a MarketingSherpa article, “in every case more than 50% of marketers improved ROI (even if only moderately) by testing”. From our own experience, all tested email campaigns increased conversion. Except for one campaign: a price testing campaign. Testing different prices didn’t increase conversion. This was, of course, also valuable information…

A survey on email testing (by eROI) showed that 37% of email marketers do not test campaigns. Knowing that there is not a single marketer out there, that is not interested in improving ROI, eROI uncovered some of the main reasons for not testing:

• I don’t know how to test (32.84%)
• My campaign timeline is too short (27.36%)
• Platform doesn’t have testing capabilities (13.43%)

As I was reading these main reasons for not testing email campaigns, it was obvious to me that many email marketers are not informed on the existing testing possibilities.

It is true that A/B testing and multivariate testing can be time consuming and not compatible with all email broadcasting platforms, but that’s the reason why there is a third option: Multivariate Testing & Optimization.

Multivariate Testing & Optimization allows you to test multiple variables at once, it’s easy, real time and compatible with all platforms.

How does it work?

• You define what you want to test (banners, calls to action, images, etc) and create the different variables.
• You enter a link for each creative in a web based tool.
• The tool compiles a small piece of code that you need to include in your email.
• Once you sent out the email through your usual email service provider, it will serve different variations of your email until statistical validity is reached.
• From that point forward it will only serve the most optimal variation of the email – all in real time.

More information on Multivariate Testing & Optimization: www.8seconds.net

eROI survey on ‘Use of testing in email marketing’: http://www2.eroi.com/l/264/2009-07-09/EAM12

Maïté