• by Jess Nelson , June 15, 2017

A majority of email marketers do not test or optimize their email marketing efforts, according to a study released this week by GetResponse. 

The email marketing platform polled more than 2,500 digital marketers from a variety of industries, representing both B2B and B2C markets. The results of the study, Email Marketing & Beyond: Global Market Benchmarks, suggest that a majority of marketers could significantly increase their email return on investment if they test their campaigns.

Fifty-one percent of respondents admitted they did not test or optimize their email marketing efforts at all, while 23% of respondents do not analyze any success metrics. Of the 49% of digital marketers who do optimize their email marketing, 26% test subject lines and 14% test landing pages. Furthermore, 21% of marketers consider top-of the-funnel metrics like clicks and opens to be their most important success metric.

There are a variety of tests that marketers can implement to measure the success of their email campaigns, and to improve a campaign’s effectiveness.

A/B testing, or split testing, is a particularly helpful guide for digital marketers. With A/B testing, marketers can send two or more varying messages to a small group of their overall email subscriber list. After evaluating what message performed the strongest and elicited the highest conversion rates, marketers can then send that message to the rest of their email subscriber list. A/B testing can be applied to subject lines, email copy, and message design.

Email was still ranked as the best digital marketing channel for ROI according to GetResponse’s report, but marketers could see even greater returns if they implementing testing.