A/B Testing Before Sending Anything
According to Dela Quist, A/B testing as it is commonly used is a waste of time, unless you take into account the time needed to obtain results with perspective, which is never less than a week.
Any test that is carried out less than a week after the end of the sending will be optimizing the openings, but not the sales , since only from a week after the sending can we see real conversion results.
The winning option of an A/B Testing in terms of opening rate may not be telecommunications email list the best for the CTR and it definitely does not mean that it is the best for conversion. To optimize our tests we must be very clear about what we want to optimize: openings, clicks or conversion. It is common for campaigns with fewer openings to generate a higher percentage of sales or conversion.
It is more efficient to create a methodology on how to generate a subject, structure or design than to test each one of them independently and constantly “reinvent the wheel.”
Quist uses the following example: the highest number of email openings occur within the first 36 hours of an email being sent. However, those who open the email later buy more than those who open it immediately. Therefore, an A/B test can give us an idea of which subject line/design/structure/copy works best and we will be optimizing the openings or the reactivity regarding the email, but if we take into account that the users who are most likely to make a purchase are those who open the email later, we will realize that we are not optimizing sales.
In this graph, the yellow and green colors show the openings and clicks over time, and the blue and purple lines show the conversion.
