Run email tests
Run email tests
1. Analyze the state of your email campaigns and ask your optimization and email team to brainstorm questions that indicate the current email performance.
Ask if you are collecting the right data, if the data is relevant, and if the data answers your questions.
2. Connect your Google Analytics account to your email tracking software to visualize the customer journey from email to conversion, and add tracking parameters.
Add the following parameters: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content. Set up button tracking and website tracking in Google Analytics to collect quantitative data on user actions.
3. Use journey specific metrics to determine the performance of your future optimization efforts.
For example, gross customer adds, marketing-qualified leads, revenue, or time-to-close. Choosing these metrics allows you to conduct better optimization tests.
4. Use Whimsical to map out your current customer journey through your email campaigns.
Include information like audience data, subject line and preview text for each email, days between each email, data dependencies, automation rules, personalization points, alternate creative and copy (if applicable), click rates for each call to action, and on-site destinations and their conversion rates from emails. Your map should show how recipients engage with each CTA, where each CTA leads, where they navigate to, and how they behave on-site or in-product.
5. Analyze your current email customer journey map to identify which actions people are being asked to perform and where on your site they're being directed. Look for gaps within the campaign.
For example, you might see that your customer journey is full of options near the start but trails off into one or two paths that might not suit all customers
6. Compare data from your current customer journey to find funnel stages that are poorly performing.
For example, you might compare email CTA clicks to the landing page’s bounce rate to discover that a mismatch in messaging between email and web page causes many customers to drop off after they click through.
7. Create a map of your ideal customer journey if all the gaps and performance issues were fixed, and create a visual version highlighting any adjustment you made.
Use qualitative conversion research to identify your customer persona, what you test, and why users are not converting.
8. Generate a list of optimization ideas using the proposed adjustment and prioritize them by effect.
For example, if you identify that your main hurdle to gaining new conversions is that users open emails but don’t click on the CTA within, then prioritize testing new CTAs.
9. Run email tests using each improvement idea, analyze the results, and reiterate after analyzing what did not work.
Segment your audience first and send emails to the same target audience