Improve Your Conversions: Split-Testing Simplified
Email marketing truly is a numbers game. The higher your conversion rates, the larger your list will be. The larger your list, the more sales you will make.
But thereās more to improving conversions and growing your list than just creating better offers and attracting more traffic. Each piece of your email list building and marketing effort has a job to do, and itās up to you to make sure itās performing as well as possible.
Thatās where split-testing will come in handy. By tracking the results you get, then making incremental changes and comparing the numbers, youāll begin to see the patterns that make a difference in your efforts.
And thatās the basis of split testing: tracking, tweaking, and testing with the goal of continuous improvement.
What Can You Split-Test?
A better question might be, āWhat canāt you split-test?ā Because frankly, you can test just about everything, including:
- Subject lines
- Calls to action
- Button colors
- Fonts and text colors
- Opt-in incentives
- Landing page layout
But hereās the trick to a good split-test: Only test one single change at a time.
You might be tempted to rewrite your headline and your call to action and your button text, but donāt. While it may seem more efficient, the problem with this approach is that youāll have no way of knowing which change had an effect on your conversions.
Did they go up because of the call to action? Or drop because of the subject line? Who knows?
Instead, make systematic changes to your landing pages and carefully track results. Thatās the only way to know for sure whatās workingāand whatās not.
Most landing page tools such as LeadPages and ClickFunnels have built-in tools for split-testing. If youāre not using these tools, you can also set up split tests using your Google Webmaster tools account.
Testing Open and Click Rates
Your email list manager should provide a way to split-test your emails as well. Open rates are critical when it comes to email marketing and list engagement. After all, if your audience isnāt opening your mail, theyāre not reading it either!
You can easily improve your open rates by split-testing subject lines to determine the format and style most likely to get your readersā attention.
To improve your click rates, test your emailās call to action. Set up two identical emailsāsame subject line and same contentābut change the call to action to see which gets the best response from your list. Youāll be able to use this information in later campaigns to improve click-throughs on all your emails.
Just like list-building, itās never too early to begin split-testing. Thereās no magical number of opt-ins you must have to get started. Thereās no amount of traffic thatās too small. So donāt waitāstart split testing your opt-in forms and emails now so you can enjoy the best conversion rates possible.