With a mailing list of many hundreds of thousands, we’ve always had the luxury of quick and easy email testing. We’ll usually split-test two or three versions of an email on groups of 10,000 subscribers and look for results the next day.

For years we’ve been able to get reliable results and send out the winner to the rest of the list in 24 hours. But lately we’ve been seeing a gap between when subscribers get a promotional email and when they actually do something about it. These days we have to wait a week to make sure we’ve got a reliable sample.

Are people taking longer to make up their minds to spend money because of the economy? Maybe it’s something else.

Have you noticed longer response times with your email marketing? Leave a comment and let us know.

Meanwhile, if you’re not already doing email testing, start now. Why WOULDN’T you want to know which subject line gets more people to read the message, or which offer converts better? Is your business already making all the money it possibly could?

Didn’t think so. Remember, your email opt-ins are potentially your best customers. They trust you.

How to test your email promotions

• Create a “control” version and one or two test versions
• Send each to a different group of at least 1,000 people from your email list
• Measure which message is more effective (an email management service like iContact can provide statistics on open rates and clickthrough rates for you to analyze)
• Send out the highest-converting version to the rest of your list*
• Keep that version as your new control; then test others against it
• Always test only one thing at a time (e.g., the subject line or day of the week the email is sent — not both!
• Keep the testing environment as consistent as possible — if you are testing the day of the week, send the test emails out at the same time on each of the test days, and send emails to the same-sized test groups.

*Note: If your list is small, split it in two and send a different version to each half. Over time you’ll get to know what works best with your subscribers and you’ll improve your overall email performance.

Email testing is still pretty quick… it’s cheap… and you won’t believe the difference one small change can make!