The ultimate question every email marketer asks with each send and each campaign is simple: What will make you, the customer, convert emails sent into sales? What will make you open them, click on the links, and ultimately buy into what my client or business is selling?

The answers to these questions vary with the approach the marketer uses. Is it enough to simply redesign or rewrite an email? Do I want to create something fresh each time or stick with the tried and true? If I’m going to make changes, what changes should I make? One approach is to conduct A/B testing of parts of your emails which don’t reflect enough clicks, and thus are killing conversion opportunities.

A/B testing can provide more in-depth answers than simply reviewing clickthrough or conversion rates. It’s best used to resolve well-defined questions: will making a link a button provide more clicks than an equivalent text link? Are people reacting negatively to the color choices I’ve made for parts of the email? Are the critical parts of the email (calls to action, key links, etc.) below the fold? Will turning the email from portrait to landscape get people to the important information faster?

There are some issues to be addressed before testing is done, particularly if you are seeing generally low results:

• Is my design solid to begin with? If you’re not getting clicks, look at what you’re sending out.  Don’t worry if you should be using buttons vs. text links if the person who gets the email isn’t sure why they should bother clicking on either of them.
• Is the change I’m making going to make a difference? Email recipients (unless they’re designers) aren’t going to care if you use a 13- or 12-point font in your headline. You’re not likely to see a change in your conversion rate because you decided to make your body font Verdana instead of Arial.  Repeat after me: A change that makes no difference isn’t really a change – not to mention that it’s a waste of time that could be spent doing something productive.
• Is there more than one problem? What then? What if your click mapping shows that there’s more than one area on your email that’s not bringing the level of results you’d like to see? Multi-variate testing lets you make more than one change at the same time. Instead of waiting for one set of results and then making another change and testing that, etc., make multiple changes and see all the results at one time. In addition, you may find that making a revision in one area means a modification somewhere else. Again, making both changes and tracking the results saves time and effort.

A/B testing is about listening to your customers. Don’t get so enamored with your design that you cost yourself clicks and conversions. If the response you’re getting isn’t what you expect, put the question: Is this what you want to see? Or is this? Will you be more likely to respond if my call to action reads this way? Or will this be more likely to attract your attention? The answers you get may surprise you, but they’ll also provide valuable insight – and even more valuable conversions.