5 easy A/B tests to boost email metrics

Let's review 5 easy to execute customer lifecycle marketing tests you can use to boost your email marketing results.

Test your "friendly-from" name

A/B testing the "friendly-from" name, or the name an email recipient sees in their inbox is quick and easy way to optimize your open rate. Take an email you're planning to send and split the audience into two groups, then duplicate the email you were going to send them and leave everything the exact same except for the "friendly-from" name (not the domain address.) Schedule them both at the exact same time and compare the open results.

Because this is a somewhat subtle experiment, make sure your version A and version B are not too similar. If they're too close, you risk not getting any clear results.

One you have send data from a send, or two, plug the unique opens and the delivered amounts into an A/B Test Significance calculator online and see how confident you can be in your results.

One idea we saw success with at a previous company was including a first name in the from name. For example, "Adam at Software Company" vs. just "Software Company". Giving the email that personal touch drove more people to open the message.

Here's an example of a first name in the "friendly-from."

Lastly, with the implementation of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, we have to assume open data will be inflated, but we're just going to assume both test groups are inflated relatively the same amount.

2. Test personalization in your subject line

This is another great way to boost open rates, however, it does require you to have additional data about your users. Additional data meaning, more info about your users than just their email. This could be things like first name, location, or some type of preference, and then populating this data into a subject line to personalize it.

An easy first step here might be to include a user's first name in your email subject line. For example, "Welcome to the club, [first name]," vs. just "Welcome to the club." Whatever email service provider you are using most likely has the ability to use this "token" as they are often called, to pull this piece of data in.

Here's an example of personalization in the subject line.

Run a 50/50 split A/B test and see if you can boost open rates by catching your user's attention with their name in the subject line.

Some of the same comments from idea #1 apply here.

3. Test a "Remail"

Remailing is a tactic that we used to use sometimes in B2C scenarios. When we would have a large sale or marketing campaign, we might do a first send at one time, and then at a later date, clone the campaign, and resend it with an updated subject line to addresses that hadn't opened the first send.

Granted, there was a little bit of risk that a user might open both emails and be a little confused, it was also an option to add a minor adjustment to the messaging to make the second send make a little more sense if this was the case.

Anyways, the second would drive an incremental boost in opens, and subsequently clicks, and then actions from the email.

Like most new things, this could be something to try with a small group of your users and see how they perform, but watch for a jump in unsubscribes.

4. Test feedback icons

Do this to begin to get a sense of how your customers feel about one of your email sends.

This can look like include a section at the bottom of your email that asks "How are we doing?" with a thumbs up icon and a thumbs down icon that are clickable which allows your customers to tell you how they like your email. Just review the clicks to each icon after you give your email results enough time to bake.

5. Test bringing a CTA above the fold

This one is simple. It's 2023 and our attention spans are short. Test adjusting the layout of an email with the CTA at the bottom of the email against a similar version of it with the CTA above the fold. My experience tells me this will help drive more CTA clicks!

As always, if you can run an A/B test and prove the impact, that's great. Again, use some of the direction and resources listed above!

Here Avocado Mattress shares a very clear CTA above the fold in an abandoned cart email.

Looking for a place to get started? Head over to our email templates resource and browse free HTML templates. Also, feel free to comment tests that have worked well for you below. Happy testing!