Looking to buy tickets for events?

Blog.

Yadda, yadda; blog, blog, blog.

Test Your Way to Better Response and Higher ROI

Using smart segmentation to help you get the right message into the correct inbox is a great start, but there comes a time in every email marketing program when things get a bit stale. No need to fear! In this month’s Setlist we’ll help you zest things up with a well-planned testing strategy.

Did you know that only 30% of companies are A/B testing? Get ahead of the game and begin implementing an A/B testing schedule to learn more about your audience. Once you see results, you can make adjustments accordingly and monitor your response. If your results holds true, an increased response will lead to more money in your pocket!

Let’s start with some dos and don’ts of awesome testing with the assistance of some of the 80’s best British bands:

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want: Don’t let biases mess with your results.

We all know the age old saying in regards to making assumptions, so don’t let yourself get in the way of your test results. Allow the test to run its course and trust the end result. If you still aren’t convinced, reset the test for a later date and run it again.

Just Can’t Get Enough: Do keep your test crystal clear.

It’s imperative to keep your variables as clear as possible. For example, if you are testing the length of your subject line , it’s important to keep the tone and content as similar as possible. Your number of words should be the only true adjustment. If you get ahead of yourself and test multiple things at once, your results will be unclear and not very useful.

Stand or Fall: Don’t expect perfection.

Not every test will be fruitful. This isn’t something to lose sleep over. Next time, try setting up a larger test group, longer test length or wider variable and see if your results improve.

Too Shy: Do step out of the box

Let your creative juices flow as you set up your tests. If you are concerned about alienating your main audience, segment a group of non-responders and use them to sample wider variations on content and timing. If good things start to show, implement the same changes when sending to your core audience.

(Keep Feeling) Fascination: Don’t quit after one good test.

Every audience changes with time. A good email program will have testing built in at regular intervals. Don’t be afraid to go back and re-test an old hypothesis—your audience’s needs or preferences could swing back the other way at any time.

Listen Like Thieves: Do create a schedule for your testing.

Go ahead and lay out a calendar of tests so that your entire team will know which changes are going to be made and when. Not only will this help you stay on track, but it will also alert the team of possible spikes in activity. They can also help you be on the lookout for any outliers that might show up outside of your email platform’s response data.

Now let’s get testing! Here are just a few of our favorite places to start:

Love My Way: Subject lines

One of the most obvious things to test is the subject line. Most email marketing providers have built in tools to help make this easy and automatic.

Testing Options:

  • Length (word and character count)
  • Humor vs. serious
  • Generic vs. personalized

Blue Monday: Time and day of send

One way to mix things up is to play around with when you are sending your campaigns. Remember to use response data to give you clues as to what day and time opens and clicks are at their peak. You just might find your stats to be different than what others find.

Testing Options:

  • Zip code
  • Time of opens
  • Domain (personal vs. work)
  • Weekend vs. weekday

Why Can’t I Be You: From name

This is one of the first things people see in the inbox and can make or break whether your recipients chose to open. See if one version is more successful than others.

Testing options:

  • Personal
  • Venue-based

More Than This: Content

Keep things fresh! This can be one of the hardest to test, since you might be a slave to your template, but you can gain valuable insight into preferences. It helps to have an ESP that maps your link clicks, but even without this you can see if switching out images or text brings more or less engagement.

Testing options:

  • Length of text or number of shows listed
  • Images vs. no images
  • Personal message

Karma Chameleon: Calls-to-action

Last but not least, don’t forget those buttons. Getting people to click them is the main purpose of the emails you are sending, so try out some variations to see what drives the most traffic.

Testing options:

  • Color
  • Language
  • Placement
  • Size

Have questions about setting up tests or creating a schedule? Just give us a shout. We are here to help you with any of your ticketing and marketing needs.

Now go out and rock those inboxes!

[button open_new_tab=”true” color=”accent-color” hover_text_color_override=”#fff” size=”medium” url=”https://hello.etix.com/company/contact/” text=”Get Started With Etix” color_override=””]

[button open_new_tab=”true” color=”accent-color” hover_text_color_override=”#fff” size=”medium” url=”http://rockhousepartners.com/contact/” text=”Get Started With Rockhouse Partners” color_override=””]

Ready to get started with Etix?

One of our team members will contact you shortly with more info!