Liame - turn email on its head

One point often forgotten in the best practices mantra is that each collection of readers is unique. And their unique behavior or response to different elements of your email program changes through time

So following proven (by the majority) tactics and approaches is a sound and safe way of going about email marketing. But we should be aware that we might be missing out on a few extra responses if we looked at things differently every now and then.

This premise is another reason for the constant advice to test.

For those wondering how to set about testing in a methodical way, Karen Gedney outlines a typical routine to follow, drawn from Jordan Ayan's book.

And her colleague Jeanne Jennings describes how you can use self-generated response curves to predict the outcome of a (test) send without waiting for all the results to come in.

David Baker also has advice on what to test. But more critically, he makes a crucial point about the context of that testing.

Namely that it's not enough to find the best of two tested alternatives. Instead, you should design tests where the results identify principles and approaches you can apply continually in the future.

So testing should be about learning as much as optimizing an individual element of an email program.

Just as testing reflects acceptance that we don't know everything about our subscribers, we can also try taking different perspectives on the whole business of email and see if that helps refine our skills and success.

Gene Liebel sets the cranial wheels turning in this article, where he suggests how you could look at your email program from a usability viewpoint to come up with better approaches to keeping users happy.

Another example of innovative thinking comes from the always great Stephanie Miller in this piece. She describes how you might use a different email approach depending on the sign-up source of your subscriber. Particularly important when you start adding sign-ups from third-party sources.

A trick to get logical folk like me to draw better is to position the object upside down, freeing your mind from left-brain assumptions. Try the same concept with email and who knows what might come out.

More on testing | Tags: email marketing, email testing

Permalink | February 13, 2008 | 0 comment(s)
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