Clever Starfish offers an email newsletter system to our clients, known as Starfish Send. Our system takes the headache out of managing your subscriber list, and enables you to easily create great-looking email newsletters that match your brand.

One of the advanced features of Starfish Send is A/B Split Testing. This sounds technical, but it is actually very simple and very powerful. The concept involves having two versions of your newsletter. Both versions are tested on the newsletter’s audience. As subject lines are a key factor in the open rate of newsletters, people often use A/B testing to test subject lines; but you can also test "from" names or even the newsletter content itself. You also define your criteria for success: the number of opens, the number of overall clicks, or the number of clicks on a particular link.

In A/B Split Testing, a small random percentage of your subscribers is sent version A, and another small percentage are sent version B. After a period of time that you have specified, the most successful newsletter is automatically sent to the remainder of your subscriber list.

Fiona Kalif from online fashion accessory store HoneyHoney regularly makes great use of A/B Split Testing. The HoneyHoney online store stocks handbags, jewellery, and cosmetics, as well as fun and clever ‘must-have’ items, all hand-picked by Fiona. The email marketing efforts for the store consist of regular broadcasts highlighting sale items and new products. Fiona’s marketing savvy and close working relationship with design agency The Globe means that her campaigns always hit the mark, both in written copy and visual style.

Fiona uses A/B Testing to test subject lines, and also sometimes to test different versions of her campaign graphics. In the example below, you can see two versions of a concept for Rebecca Minkoff handbags. In this case, Fiona defined two newsletter versions, and specified that the newsletter with the most clicks after one hour should be sent out to the rest of her list. As it turned out, Version A was the winner.

 

 

If you’re interested in finding out how Starfish Send can improve your email marketing, contact us.

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