Split testing is a great way to figure out which email marketing strategy is working better. If you use an autoresponder service like Aweber, this is very easy to do. Question is, what do you split test and how? This article is going to go over some split testing strategies for your emails that should bring about some interesting and useful results.

At the top of my list of things to split test is the subject line of the email. This is going to be the thing that gets the prospect to open the email in the first place. Most autoresponder services have personalization fields that you can use in your subject. So one split testing strategy is to use the subject as is and then with the personalization field and see which one gets a better response. In some niches, using the person’s name in the subject actually decreases the open rate. You will find this out for yourself. And of course, aside from using personalization as a split test, you can try two completely different subject lines and see which one gets a better open rate. Point is, the subject is the first thing you test.

Next is the content of the email itself. This is where things get a little tricky since there are so many variables here. However, the thing that I most commonly split test is when I send an email that has content and a sales pitch combined. What I will do is send one version with the content first and the pitch coming at the end and then another version where I will get the sales pitch out of the way right at the beginning and then move on to the actual subject of the email. Again, with certain niches, you will find one method will work better than the other.

This is the reason why it’s imperative that we split test. A difference of a 1% open rate may not seem like much, but if you’re talking about a list of 100,000 prospects, that’s 1,000 more emails that are opened. If you sell to even just 1% of those 1,000, that’s 10 extra sales. If you’re selling a $997 ecourse, that’s almost $10,000 extra in your pocket. Get the picture? Don’t ever pass up even the smallest opportunity to increase your open and response rate.

Split testing is the best way to get that done.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.