Let’s say you ran an A/B test. The email with the higher open rate wins, right?
Maybe.
Unfortunately, most Email Service Providers (ESPs) that provide an automated A/B test in their tools will automatically pick the campaign that has the best open rate, but you may be missing more critical metrics (revenue, conversion rates, clicks, etc)
To illustrate, here are real A/B test results I reviewed for a client where they tested two subject lines with the same email content:
When I saw these results, I noticed that Subject Line B had a higher click through rate (CTR) and a lower unsubscribe rate. Even if the CTR was higher, this doesn’t guarantee that Subject Line B would have performed better since the OR was lower. Without having access to conversion or revenue data, I re-analyzed the A/B test results with the objective of finding the campaign that would have resulted in higher clicks through to the website.
To do this, I took their sending volumes for both campaigns and “reset” them to reflect results for sending to exactly 100,000 subscribers for each test group:
Client Supplied Data:
“Reset” Data:
Based on these results, it becomes very clear that Subject Line B should have been the test winner. Even though Subject Line A had more opens than Subject Line B, these results show that Subject Line B was better at preparing the subscriber for the email content and resulted in a higher number of click-throughs and lower unsubscribes.
When running A/B tests, make sure you measure the results against your email goals. Open rates are important, but should only determine the results of an A/B test when the goal of your email program is brand awareness or re-engagement.
For more information on A/B tests, here are some helpful links:
- “All About A/B Testing” by Return Path. In this ebook, we’ll give you the tools to become an A/B testing expert, including: How to set up and run your A/B test, analyzing your results, A/B testing best practices, and 50 testing ideas to get you started.
- “How to Set Up and Run an A/B Test” by Lauren McCombs.
- Our free Sample Size Calculator to help determine what percentage of your list should receive the “test” version of your email marketing experiments.