• by Darrah MacLean , February 10, 2010

When your current email creative is scoring touchdowns, why would you add a new play into the rotation? Because, most likely, your competition is looking at your game-winning plays and figuring out how to copy them or trump them. And that means you have to evolve your formula and elevate your A-game. If you haven't committed your 2010 email resolutions to paper yet, you might want to think about adding a creative A/B test to the list. What's a creative A/B test? It's where you pit your current creative (A) against a revamped version (B) to see which one garners the most clicks, opens, sales or whatever your benchmark for success might be.

By testing a new execution before you roll it out to your entire email program, you can identify what works and what doesn't before you fully commit to something that may not drive results in the end. A simple A/B test is all it takes to pinpoint ways to evolve your design, copy, calls-to-action, links, subject lines and more. Here are four quick tips for successful testing. Add more to the comments section if you have a tried-and-true approach, or a testing triumph or tragedy that you want to share.

Be strategic about your testing. Testing isn't something you should figure out on the fly. You want to plan for it, both from a business perspective and a creative perspective. Consider sitting down quarterly as a team with your email calendar in hand and planning tests across the three-month period.

Test the same thing multiple times. Flukes happen, so to be sure your new creative is really affecting clicks, test it out a for a full month. That way you get beyond the novelty stage and can start to see for sure if there is a sustained lift.

Keep it simple by choosing one element to test at a time. For example, you might change up the design but keep the content exactly the same. Or vice versa.

Know the potential liabilities. Go into your test with your eyes wide open. If there is potential for a new execution to affect deliverability, pull a small percentage of your list to see what happens. Based on the results, you can decide whether it makes sense to roll it out to the masses.

Spread the word and share the results. Before you commit to a test, make sure all the key players are on board, from marketing people to creative folks. And once the test is over, be sure to socialize the results within your organization.