Optimise your Email Campaigns

Now that you’ve started to send your first emails through Pardot, you want them to work as best as they can. Here are our top tips for testing and optimising your email campaigns.

Look at the top metrics

You don’t want to get bogged down in reporting, but finding patterns or trends in your reports can tell you a lot about your email marketing. Here are the most important metrics to watch out for:

• Deliverability rate
  How many emails are delivered compared to the number of emails that you push out?
• Open rate*
  How many of the emails that are delivered are being opened?
• Click-through rate (CTR)
  How many clicks have you received in relation to the number of emails that are delivered?
• Click to open rate (CTOR)*
  How many clicks have you received in relation to the number of emails that are opened?
• Devices
  Which devices or browsers are your audience using to read your emails?
• Unsubscribe rate
  How many people are unsubscribing from each email compared to the number of emails that are delivered?

Optimise your email templates based on insight

By looking at the key metrics in your List Emails Report, you can prioritise your time and work on the things that will have the biggest impact. For more detailed actions based on the insight you gleam from your email reports, download our Email Optimisation Infographic.

The best way to optimise is to A/B split test

We’ve given you some initial ideas to start optimising your email campaigns, but ultimately the only way to see which subject line or call to action really results in more opens or clicks is to carry out an A/B split test.

An A/B split test randomly selects a test proportion of your mailing list and sends a control version of your email to half the segment and a test version of your email to the other half. The winning email template is then sent to the remainder of your list. Your sample size, test duration and the statistical relevance of your testing can get very scientific – all of which can be worked out in this A/B Split Test Significance Calculator from VWO.

However, if you want to run a simple A/B split test to your audience, then here are our top tips to follow:

• Use a relatively large list to determine a statistically relevant result from your A/B split test.
• Choose to test one variation at a time and make bold alterations to your test email so you know exactly what’s impacting the results.
• Be clear about what you are testing and what you expect to happen.
• Wait at least a day (ideally 3-4) to determine the winning template of your A/B split test.
• Test the same element a few times to build more confidence in your test results.
• Learn from your results! Adapt and change your template, subject line or sending options and then start testing a new element.

*You should use the number of opens and your open rate with some caution. The only way Pardot (and any other email service provider) can determine an email open is by inserting a small pixel image within your email. When that image is requested from the server in order to display the email, Pardot assumes that the email was seen and therefore counts it towards an open. This may not be an accurate representation of email opens as images can automatically be downloaded from the server for email preview windows or a recipient may choose to disable images from appearing and therefore skew open rate metrics.