Tests like A/B testing can be invaluable to email marketers. However, A/B test is an umbrella term for when you are testing different elements within your email to compare and see which works better. But there are many things that you can test for in an email. Here are some good tests to perform before sending your email campaign:

• Subject Lines
• Time of Day
• Inbox Tests

Subject Lines

Subject lines are very important. Not only do filters look at subject lines for possible spam, but it describes what the email is about and entices the subscriber to open the email. So coming up with that perfect sounding subject line can be difficult. By performing an A/B test to test the different subject lines you come up with, the winning subject line will be sent to the majority of your list for an optimum open rate.

So what would you open, a subject line like, “Benchmark Email Monthly Updates” or would you open, “Benchmark Email New Feature and Patch Notes?”

Time of Day

A common question we’re often asked is when to send your email? Well, this largely depends on your contacts and their preference, useful information may be their occupation and their company location. Depending on the content of your email, you may want to send an email early in the morning as people are checking their work/business related emails. Or you may want to send catalogs during lunch or afternoon for a quick look at deals and some quick shopping.

Since finding that good time largely depends on the type of email and content, again testing sending different times of the day, or even different days of the week. However, it’s very important to note before we start testing wildly. Best practice dictates that if you promise to send daily, weekly, or annual, you should always stick to that regimen. Trying to find a good time of day or week should not impede that promise.

Inbox Tests

This is a common test being done today but I thought I should bring it up because there are many ways to go about doing so. Some of us are aware that all the different browsers and software used to view emails can alter the email so that it can be displayed nicely on their end. However this sometimes causes problems, especially in the case of Microsoft Outlook, which uses the Word processing engine to render the email.

It’s very important to invest time to testing what your emails would look like in at the very least the most common services like:

• Gmail
• Yahoo
• AOL
• Hotmail
• Outlook

These 5 are the most commonly used public email services. By having an account for each of these services, you’ll be able to cover at the very least public domains. Another method to testing how emails would look is by using Benchmark Email’s Inbox Checker tool. This tool will allow the user to test the email on any computer operating system, browser, and service. Users can also test the email in a pass or fail type of test.

The underlying theme to these tests how can we as the sender, better engage or get better visibility with the client. Subject lines are to catch the attention of the subscriber. Then there’s time of day so that we at least know they are awake when they receive the email!. Lastly, we need to make sure that the email looks good for that person, for whatever inbox they are using. It’s impossible to test and guarantee all emails, we definitely try our best.