7 Steps to Starting Your List — Part 7 – the penultimate

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Test and Track    

Yes – I know the title says “penultimate” and penultimate means “last but one in a series.” I plan to follow up in the next post with a complete list of resources so even though this is #7 of 7, it’s still the penultimate.

We’ve come an incredibly long way – from defining your target audience to remembering not to Spam people to actually writing email. Testing and tracking is an important last step because you need to see how things are working.

What should you be measuring?

  • Open rates (the % of subscribers that open an email)
  • Click through rates (the % of subscribers that click through to a webpage)
  • Conversion rates (% of unique visitors that convert to a desired action – sale, membership, event registration)
  • Bounce rates (% of undelivered emails)
  • Unsubscribe rates (% of users that apt out).

One way of testing is to do an A/B split test where you send different segments of your list almost the same email with slight differences (perhaps a subject heating, or perhaps a day or week or time of day sent) to see which produces more open rates (this is detailed below in the “Related articles” section.)

While I can’t give exact statistics and industry averages on the following, I’ve noticed two things from personal observation:

  • From lists I’ve managed, I’ve noticed that the more consistently email is sent, the better the open rates.
  • INDIVIDUAL lists do not necessarily follow industry averages.

So even if some industry rag says to send messages at a “best time,” this might not necessarily hold true on your specific list.

Test – test subject headings, test different send times – or not, but REMEMBER

Consistent, clear, and customer focused communication is always a good option. 

Related articles

Finally, a review of the previous posts on this topic.

  1. Build your list — define your target email audience.
  2. Create Freebie Offer
  3. Promoting your sign-up form
  4. Remember CAN-Spam
  5. Set up your program
  6. Create your email
  7. Test and Track
Image courtesy of Ohmega1982 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net