Split Testing Remains an Area of Untapped Potential for Email Marketers

Split testing prior to launching an email marketing campaign can help marketers learn more about their target audience, but new research shows that it is still not regularly practiced. The “State of Split Testing” report from Phrasee has discovered that only about half of marketers test subject lines on emails.

Further, about a quarter of respondents never split test their subject lines. These results are surprising to the authors of the report, as subject lines rank as one of the top three elements affecting the response rate of an email campaign (behind quality of data and segment selection).

Data from the report hints that marketers are not invested in developing test-worthy subject lines. Approximately 47 percent said that their marketing team only spends about one hour thinking of subject lines to test. Nearly 46 percent stated that they spend just a few minutes on this task.

Eighty-three percent of marketers claimed that they use open rates to measure the success of their subject lines and emails. About 45 percent said they relied on the click-to-open rate, while 40 percent cited the click rate.

After they’ve gathered their data, 44 percent said that they “don’t really do much” in terms of analyzing past results to design future split tests.

Identifying Email Marketing Challenges

As marketers struggle with their email marketing campaigns, previous research has indicated that there is a large amount of dissatisfaction surrounding the practice. An e-book published by Adobe and the Digital Marketing Association in 2015 found that two-thirds of today’s marketers are less than satisfied with their email marketing efforts.

There have been studies released that document marketers’ specific struggles as well. The “Email Marketing Trends” report from Ascend2 identified low click-through rates (53 percent), lack of effective strategy (41 percent) and poor quality content (32 percent) as top challenges back in May 2015.