If you’re tracking your email open rates, then I applaud you. By tracking you’re able to see which subject lines are working and which ones aren’t. But knowing that isn’t enough because after all, we’re not really interested in getting emails opened, are we? That might sound like a trick question, but it’s not. Getting emails opened is only the first step towards our real goal, which is making a sale.
Let’s say you test two different subject lines, and subject line A gets opened twice as often as subject line B. Obviously subject line A is the one to continue using, right?
Not necessarily. I’ve seen marketers do split test where Subject Line A might get twice as many opens, but it only gets HALF as many sales as Subject Line B.
You might see an e-mail split test report that looks like this:
Subject Line A 300 opens, 7 sales
Subject Line B 150 opens, 14 sales
How is this possible? Subject Line A mainly attracted the curious, but Subject Line B attracted the buyers.
As always it pays to test everything.
