I have already had experience in split testing with direct email campaigns from my brief time as a campaign manager at Bank of America Corporation, however the lists were much larger back then and were purchased, so therefore far more receptive to marketing emails and data was easier to analyse and draw conclusions from due to larger samples.
The reality is, for many SME's that their database of contacts is one that has been built upon leads from trade shows, along with business cards from networking events. Thus being less receptive to marketing emails, smaller samples and harder data to analyse.
The first problem I encountered when executing direct email campaigns at my current SME was the open rate. Although the bounces were few, the open rate was still poor. I did some research into this and decided to test subject lines. I found that by including the company name in the subject line, the open rate increased significantly over an email without the company name in the subject line. So a great start there!
The next problem I faced was that of click throughs. Initially I assumed this was to do with the amount of images in the email itself, as in my previous role the image to text ratio significantly affected the success of the email. So I then tested this, one email made up of mostly text against one of mostly images. No success to be had, the results proved inconclusive. So what now?
My next thought was that the fact that it was a sales email was putting recipients off. However my answer to this came when we distributed our first eBook, even though we made it very clear that this was free and involved no effort on their part, the click through was not as expected.
After researching this problem, I found a couple of suggestions that might help. One was to include as many links as possible in the email, however on review of this I decided that would only confuse a reader and spoil the aesthetic of the email itself. My next idea, and one which I am eager to test next was using a teaser email, so including half a paragraph, with some dotted lines and a 'read more' hyperlink included. The reason I am eager to test this is that when testing a similar concept at BoA, it was a resounding failure, so therefore it would be interesting to see the results for an SME in a different industry.
What is clear though is that I am getting closer to establishing the perfect formula for direct email campaigns for SME's! Which of course is great news!
Look out for further updates on my results in future blog entries.
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