Can I test my emails?

Of course you can! With A/B testing tools, like those offered by Mailchimp, you can do split testing and test as many as three variations for campaigns.

You can also test subject lines, content, from names, and send times. You can test your reach too; that's how many people get your emails. Always optimize your emails for better results.

How to test your emails?

First, choose the factor that defines success for you. It could be clicks, opens, or money earned. We’ll collect the results, and show you the winner. And you can automate it too. Just tell Mailchimp to automatically send out the winning campaign. It's really pretty easy.

Email marketing tips to get you started

1. Create an email marketing plan.

To make the planning part easier, we’ve highlighted some best practices you’ll want to consider when devising a strategy for your email marketing.

Define your audience

No matter what you sell, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is in order to effectively communicate with them. Mailchimp lets you dig a little deeper to segment users within your audience so you can send them personalized and targeted emails that help increase engagement, build trustful relationships and generate greater ROI.

Signup sources

Some of the most valuable data your signup form has to offer is how and where subscribers sign up for your list. If you’re an e-commerce business with your store connected to Mailchimp, knowing where your customers joined your list can give you a better idea of how to communicate with them and where you might want to focus your marketing efforts going forward.

Segments and groups

Once you’ve identified smaller collections of people within your larger audience, you’ll be able to create groups and segments to send more relevant and personalized emails to your recipients—and the more relevant the campaign, the better the results. There are times when you’ll want to send to your entire list, but by segmenting users and taking advantage of Mailchimp’s segmentation tools can significantly increase the click-through rates and e-commerce orders your campaigns generate.

Decide what to write

Now that you know who you’re writing to, it’s time to think about your content. What do you want to say to your audience? What is your content marketing strategy? You’ll want to send emails with purpose, that really speak to your subscribers, so always keep in mind what they signed up for.

Establish your sending frequency and goals

There’s nothing set in stone about how often you should email your customers, but if you send too often, your subscribers are likely to tune out what you have to say or unsubscribe altogether. Some users that run a blog or news website might choose to send daily updates to their subscribers, while other users only send twice a month so subscribers stay excited about their emails. Choose to send your email campaign at your own pace, and check the unsubscribe rates and the click through rates to adjust the frequency if needed.

Make a schedule

One way to make sure you’re staying on track is to create a content calendar to schedule your campaigns, blog posts, social media posts, and more.

Your email marketing schedule will depend on your industry, the types of content you send (content marketing strategy), and your sending frequency.

2. Design your emails

Design tips

When designing email campaigns, focus on your message and keep your design straightforward. We suggest laying out all the elements for your campaign in a hierarchy, putting your most important information or the main takeaway toward the top so people can quickly scan your email if they’re short on time.

Code your own templates

Looking to have more control over your email design? You have the option to code your own HTML template and import it to Mailchimp.

3. Test your emails

Test in different email clients and ISPs

All email clients are created differently, which means that the campaign you designed in Mailchimp might look slightly different in your subscribers’ inboxes. Be sure to check the emails on mobile devices as well as they can look different in responsive designs.

Send test emails to friends and coworkers

If you have any friends or coworkers who can check your email for typos and give you some feedback on the layout, you can send them a test email so they can preview the campaign directly in their inbox.

Find the best version with A/B Testing campaigns

Not sure which subject line will get the most opens and clicks? Think there might be a certain time of day your customers are most likely to make a purchase through your campaign? Running an A/B test lets you experiment with different versions of your emails to see how the changes you make impact your results.

4. What you can do with marketing automation

Unlike regular campaigns, an automation is a targeted email or series of emails that you can set and forget. From a welcome email series to follow up emails after a purchase to rewarding your customers with a special incentive, automation helps you streamline your communications with customers so you have more time to focus on creating content and increasing return on investment (ROI). Plus, you can design, send, and track order notifications to update customers on purchases they made from your store.

5. Measure your performance

The data collected in your Mailchimp reports will help you refine your marketing strategy going forward.

Opens and clicks

These are the most obvious statistics for measuring campaign engagement, as they indicate how well your subject lines and campaign content resonates with a particular list. But it’s important to consider how your open and click through rates compare to other companies in your industry—otherwise you’re looking at your statistics in a vacuum.

E-commerce data

If you’ve connected your store to Mailchimp and turned on e-commerce link tracking for your campaigns, you can view purchase data for your subscribers in campaign reports, subscriber profiles, and on the account dashboard.

Website traffic

The campaigns you send can help you direct more traffic to your website or online store. And there are a few integrations you can sync with Mailchimp so you can track any trends in website traffic or e-commerce activity after you send a campaign.