Hey friend!
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is in full swing—which in my house means routine has been replaced with late bedtimes and long days of keeping a 9 and 5 year old engaged and entertained
when camp is out.
But it is also a time that breeds creativity, and last week my kids came up with my favorite idea of the summer so far: earning money with a lemonade stand.
I'll be honest with you, my heart sank a little at first
thinking about how quiet our neighborhood becomes during the summer months. A normally busy elementary school down the street sits silent, and the busy flow of foot and vehicle traffic has all but vanished.
Undeterred by my jaded warnings about "success," my kids remained bright eyed and insisted on pushing forward. So we hit the grocery store
for lemons lemonade mix and sign making materials a pizza box lid. All that was left was picking a location.
They could set up in our front yard where friendly, familiar neighbors could pass by and take pity on their quiet entrepreneurial effort or they could move 20 yards down the street to the corner of the school's property, where
they would be less familiar to potential customers, but traffic may be a bit more steady.
That's when my 9 year old proved his business acumen by asking, "why don't we test both?"
Wow. Why don't we?
The Case for Testing Subject Lines
Testing is often overlooked by businesses of all sizes, but can teach you so much about your audience, their needs, and how to provide them with meaningful value (read on to see which location won).
It also doesn't need to
take a lot of time. With AWeber we've made it really easy to test anything in your email: subject lines, design, content, you name it.
One of my personal favorites you can try this week is a 10/10/80 test of your subject line.
In Breakthrough Advertising, legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz wrote, "Your headline has only one job—to stop your prospect and compel him to read the second sentence of your ad."
It's no different for subject lines. Their one job is to stop the reader and compel them to open your email, where the real value lives.
With a 10/10/80 split test (step by step here) you send 10% of your audience your email broadcast with "subject line A" and a different 10% of your audience the same email broadcast with "subject line B."
Then, watch early results to see which subject line gets the higher open and click through rate. The remaining 80% of your audience will be sent the broadcast with the better performing subject line.
By investing just a few minutes of your time, you've learned something about your audience you can apply to future campaigns and you've
ensured that you'll get the most out of your current send.
Spoiler: you’re actually reading this email as part of a 10/10/80 subject line split test—either seeing a variation or the winning result—and we’ll share our findings with you next week!
