Split testing is such a simple thing to carry out and will allow you to not only get to know your audience better but also increase conversions.

You can split test most aspects of a campaign but it is definitely worth split testing:

Subject Lines – Change the subject lines and see which has a higher open rate.
Email Design – Change the layouts around and see if different call to actions or layouts affect your conversion and click through rates.
Content – See what gets your recipients clicking by doing different versions of your email content.  Maybe put different emphasis on different areas to see how they react.

Triggered Emails

These can be a great follow up to your campaigns. Link triggered emails are an automatic response to a user clicking on a certain link within your email campaign.  Once they have clicked on the link, they receive an additional email that can follow up from the link they have clicked; allowing you to send targeted emails to people who not only want to receive them but who’s interest in that subject is also currently high.

Event triggered emails are also good to have in place to add a personal feel to your campaigns.  Events that are most commonly used – Birthdays, Holidays and events which correspond to your brand.

Autoresponder Campaigns

A great way to keep your recent subscribers interested in your email products is with an autoresponder campaign.  This only requires the initial setting up time and then it is automated so the work on your side is virtually zero after it is set up.

Take inspiration from this recent blog post I did about a few companies welcome campaigns: Judging Welcome Email Campaigns

Preference Centres

When is an unsubscribe, not an unsubscribe?  No this isn’t the build up to a terrible email marketing punchline, but a way to turn an unsubscribe into a positive improvement in your email marketing campaign.  Read more about this process here

Use previous results

It’s something which you will already have to hand and provides so much information about your campaigns and recipients habits but so many people still don’t use their previous email campaigns statistics to their full extent.

Look through previous campaigns and see what factors increased/decreased the opens/click throughs/conversions of your campaigns.  Then split test these factors to further your knowledge of your recipients and before you know it, you’ll be looking back at your early campaigns and wondering how you ever got business with such untargeted campaigns.

As they have just opted into your email list you have to consider that they’re at the time of the welcome email reaching them, highly receptive to any material you put forward to them.  Knowing this fact can enable you to secure a high long-term deliverability and open rate. 

One of the best things you can do is ask the user to “whitelist” you.  To ask them to whitelist you, you simply have to ask them to add your address to their contacts list in their account.  This will then enable you (in certain email inboxes) to bypass most of the spam filters they have in place as the user has you as a trusted sender.  This will allow you to be a bit more creative with your design and not so creative with your wording; the email marketers dream.

This is also a time where you can start to entice them with special offers.  In the first welcoming email you could offer a “sign up” discount for all new users or just display your current offers.  Just remember, you’re guaranteed a really high open rate and it would be a shame not to capitalise on that just a little bit. 

When I say “a little bit”, I really do mean it.  There is a limit to how much you can hit them with to start with.  Remember you’re not whitelisted just yet and bombarding them with promotions is not advised.  The majority (79%)  of welcoming emails are constructed in html (source:EEC – Retail Subscription Benchmark Study) but most of them are constructed in html “light”, a scaled down version of html with emphasis placed on text content, not image.  So bear this in mind when constructing your welcome email template.

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk