I'm a big fan of practicing what I preach.  And I like to see other people do the same thing.  MarketingSherpa has posted a case study about an email marketing firm that put to use the same tactics that it normally teaches to other businesses.  The company, ExactTarget, was looking to find a way to keep its email newsletter audience engaged and improve response rates.

So they did exactly what they charged other companies for:  they put their email newsletter to the test.

ExactTarget took a segment of 4,000 out of its 20,000 member subscription list and created 16 groups of 250.  They then created newsletters from a combination of 8 interchangeable elements.  They tested two subject lines, one asking to confirm a subscription and the other adding a since of urgency.  Some emails had a personalized headline and some had a generic one.  Some emails had opt-in buttons and some emails had both an opt-in button and opt-out button.  And half of the newsletters sent out had a thumb-nailed sample of the new report the company was going to market.

Each of the 16 groups was sent a different version of the newsletter.  What did the company learn?  The message with the urgent subject, personalized headline, and both opt-in/opt-out buttons performed the worst.  In fact, only 4% of the recipients confirmed their subscriptions.  But the winning design fared much better.  It contained the confirmation subject line, the generic headline, and both opt-in/out buttons.  With that combination of elements, the company saw a 24% confirmation rate.

ExactTarget's Marketing Director told MarketingSherpa that the company was surprised by the results.  They assumed the personalized headline would be more engaging to customers.  But in fact, the opposite was true.  And when the company used the winning design to launch another campaign a week or so later, they saw equally as impressive numbers:

• Clickthrough rates of between 12 - 15%
• Between 72 - 81% of those who opened the email requested the newsletter

And now, ExactTarget told MarketingSherpa, the company can go to its customers armed with first-hand knowledge of the benefits of testing.