Your audience is constantly changing, and if you want to continue engaging successfully, you need to change with them.
That’s exactly why testing is SO important for your business—it helps you make choices based on what your audience wants and needs versus what you *think* they need (or—even worse—what the digital marketing masters say you “should” be doing).
And the great thing about the Circuit Sales System—especially compared to live launching—is that selling every single day means you can also get data every single day. You don’t have to sit around waiting for the results of your next launch, and can stop relying on guesswork to make important business decisions.
There are a number of tests that you can run in any area of your business but here, we’re focusing on five A/B tests that will optimize your emails to bump up engagement and improve your conversions!
What is A/B Testing?
A/B testing is a marketing strategy that pits two different versions of an email (or other elements of a marketing campaign) against each other to see which is more effective.
Everything about the email stays the same, except for one variable. For example, the subject line might be different in both emails, but everything else is exactly the same. This methodology lets you be absolutely certain that it was the subject line that had the impact.
Whereas if you made changes to the subject line, the image, and the colors, you can’t be sure what it was that had the positive (or negative!) impact. Yes, testing one variable at a time means you have to move a little bit slower, but it is much more intentional and can have a HUGE impact on the results of your emails.
It also means you’ll also have more intentional hypotheses for how to continue to test and move those numbers up—rather than just throwing spaghetti at the wall and having no clue what’s actually making a difference for your business!
Test #1 Subject Lines
One of the reasons we put subject lines first on our list is because subject lines are SO crucial—if your subject line doesn’t get someone to open your email, then the rest of your email is irrelevant.
Ironically, many people leave the subject line to the end. They put a lot of effort into writing the email first and then make the subject line a throwaway task. But if people click “delete” based on your subject line, then the rest of your email is pretty much wasted—even if you have the most incredible copy in the main body!
That’s why the metric you should be focusing on for subject lines is the open rate, as this is directly impacted by the effectiveness of your subject line (discover more must-monitor metrics to increase sales here).
There are many different things that you can test within the subject lines, but one of the first go-to tests would be pitting a benefit-oriented subject line (what they’re going to get out of opening the email) against a curiosity-driven subject line.
If you’re writing a subject line to pique curiosity, remember that you still have to make it detailed enough so that your audience understands why they should open that email.
For example, “[insert crazy thing] happened to me yesterday” does not necessarily relate to your audience in any way. If you changed it to “[insert crazy thing] happened to me yesterday and here’s how it will reduce your cost per lead”, it becomes much more compelling by piquing their interest and adding a little bit of a benefit.
There are manyyy other things you can test when it comes to subject lines—in fact, far too many to list here! But some of the key ones you might want to consider include: questions versus statements, personalizing with their names, testing out the length of your subject lines, using emojis, and capitalizing every single word versus just the initial first word.
Test #2 The First Line of Your Email
Once people open up your email, another thing that you can test is the first line of your email (a lot of people call this “the hook” as you’re trying to hook people’s interest).
Just because someone has opened your email, does not mean that you’re going to keep that interest. That’s why, after the subject line, this is the next most important piece of copy.
Your first line impacts whether they will go on to read the rest of your email and make it to your call to action. And if that first line isn’t grabbing their attention, they might still delete it.
If you’re thinking, “But I have a different first line of my email every time I send an email?”, we’re talking specifically about the emails that you are sending regularly, aka your automated emails.
Our CSS students know that the Circuit is all automated, which makes it much easier to test and see an impact because people are opening up these emails every single day. And you can immediately do a split test to see which first line performs better in your sequence.
As business owners, it’s easy to get wrapped up in our own business and in our own writing. We just assume that what we find interesting is something that everybody will find interesting.
That’s why we always encourage you to write your draft out, take a step back, give yourself a little bit of distance, and then come back to look at your copy objectively. Imagine it’s showing up in your inbox, and you clicked on that subject line to read it. Is that first line genuinely going to make you keep reading?
Test #3 Call To Action Wording
In email marketing, a call to action (or CTA) is a button or link in your email that encourages the reader to take a specific action—the classic ones being “Buy Now,” “Learn More,” and “Sign Up.”
Sometimes, people try to go too far on the call to action by incorporating their brand voice or trying to get a bit too “fun”, which can muddy what it is you actually want them to do next.
You’d be surprised at how little people retain, so don’t assume that just because you’ve explained something in your copy, people will remember it. (Or that they even read it in the first place!)
We have the omnipotence as the business owners of knowing the whole flow of where people came from and where they’re going to next. But that person might not remember everything like we do and so we really need to simplify it for them.
It’s always a good idea to start your call to action with a verb that makes it clear what it is you want them to do. You might use words like “learn”, “get”, “save”, and then add more copy after that to explain the action.
If you use phrases like “I want this”, depending on your audience, they might not be savvy enough to understand they’re supposed to do something with that, even if it’s a button. Of course, you might discover that “I want this” turns out to perform better! But it’s definitely worth testing it against something else to be sure.
There are two metrics that you need to look at when it comes to your CTA. Firstly, you need to look at click through rate, and secondly, you need to look at bounce rate (the percentage of people who get to a page and then immediately leave).
Generally, when there’s a high bounce rate, it’s because people are getting to a page, and it’s not what they expected it to be, so they immediately leave. And it could be that some of the more “fun” or less specific CTAs make people click through because they assume they’re getting something else, but when they see the page, they’re disappointed to see it’s something else and leave straight away.
Test #4 Call to Action Placement
Your CTA is often going to have a link associated with it, whether it’s a page that you’re sending them to, a podcast platform, or a booking page. So you can also test the placement of that CTA within your email.
I think a lot of us tend to tell people the whole story, and then at the end we say, “Okay, go here to do this!” But there may be opportunities to put that link further up in your email.
For example, if you name your program, or if you talk about the name of your program, earlier in the email, that could be an opportunity to add a link.
Testing the number of links in an email and testing the placement of those links in your email can be extremely useful. And don’t forget that you typically want ONE call to action in the email so that you’re not sending people to different areas and mixing messages within that email.
Test #5 Testimonials
Including a testimonial within your emails is another great test to run, whether it’s within a sales sequence or within your weekly newsletter. Testimonials often catch people’s attention and help them understand how wonderful you and your program are.
Some of the tests you might run could be to do with the different design treatments of the testimonial, such as using a screen grab versus text, or adding a photo versus just putting a quote with a name (we tend to blur out people’s last names for privacy purposes).
I would recommend, if you are testing these different design treatments of it, keeping the testimonial the same so that you can see if the design makes an impact. And then if you see that the screen grab performed best, you can go on to test two different testimonials to see if the message of one outweighs the other.
Often, what we *think* is going to be a testimonial that gets people to take action…is not. For example, let’s say you’re a business coach and teach a program that helps people increase their revenue. You might have a testimonial from someone who says they went from making $100,000 a year last year, to making $6 million this year.
Obviously, this is an amazing testimonial. But there may be people in your target audience who find that $6 million is so aspirational, that it’s just completely out of their realm of understanding. And it almost pushes them away because they’re not in a place where they can even conceive getting to $6 million.
In this case, it would be a good idea to test that testimonial against someone who said, “I made $100,000 last year, doubled my revenue this year, and it was easier than I would have ever believed!” Is the number less exciting? Absolutely. But your audience might feel like doubling their revenue is much more doable for them, meaning they’re more likely to want to work with you.
It might not even be revenue that moves people; you might find that it’s working hours and time freedom which resonates more with your audience. It’s very easy to assume what you think will perform better but we are constantly being surprised by what wins in our tests. (Seriously, if we started a betting pool, I’d be broke!)
When in Doubt, Test!
You can’t afford to make assumptions about what your audience needs. What’s compelling to you might not be what’s compelling to your audience. That’s why it’s so important to test everything, test variables one at a time, and give the tests time to produce enough results to actually measure whether it is effective (at least 100 people opening is a good starting point).
And the great thing about testing is that it allows you to make tiny, incremental changes that can have BIG impacts on your revenue. Let’s say you increase the open rate by 2%—when you’re sending thousands of people through over the course of a year, that could work out to be hundreds more people who have the opportunity to get to your sales page.
So don’t drive yourself too nuts trying to figure out what’s going to work—just test it! Ultimately, it’s going to help you make choices based on what your audience wants and what your audience will respond to.
Read More
In this blog post, you’ll learn more about how tracking metrics and analyzing data can ensure consistent and predictable sales growth for your business.
Watch More
In this Energize Your Online Business podcast episode, Nicki and Kate dig into the importance of testing for your business. Listen in to discover five different email tests that will boost engagement and drive more conversions.
Your Turn!
What test are you currently running in your business? Let us know in the comments below!