Finding the best email marketing practices with A/B testing — a development study
Laakso, Maiju (2022)
Laakso, Maiju
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022122331438
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022122331438
Tiivistelmä
Email has long been an effective and popular communication medium, and with the number of email users expected to increase up to 4.3 billion in the upcoming years, it provides many companies with great potential for audience reach and customer communication. An email marketing campaign is successful only when the recipient takes the action intended for them by the marketer. This study focuses on finding the best practices to achieve this, focusing on key performance indicators often considered important in email marketing: click and open rate. The study also investigates how recipients are most likely to click on a call to action after reading the email content by investigating click through rate. Therefore, the research questions this study aims to answer are: 1. How do the differences in email subject lines and content affect open and click rates? and 2. What are the best practices to creating an effective email subject line? The theoretical framework comprises of review of the buyer journey and the role of email as a communication medium within inbound marketing. Some common psychological principles related to marketing theories are discussed. Studies of the psychology behind email subject lines and the use of split testing are discussed and serve as a reference for the research of the study. Answers to the research questions are pursued by performing actions through split testing. The main findings of the research prove the need for tailored email messaging to former and current customers separately. It also identified some email marketing practices that resonate with the case company’s audience regarding subject lines and email content. The effects of the test variables to open and click rates were identified. The collected data provides information about the preferences of the case company’s leads and customers for the short-term. Due to this, continuous A/B testing is recommended to be implemented throughout the case company’s email marketing efforts.