How A/B Testing Can Help Perfect Your Pardot Emails

Because email communications are such a vital element of a marketing plan, it's critical to keep your emails in tip-top shape. The following Pardot official statement is the best guide for your campaign.

“After all, successful email campaigns aren’t just about your email template”.

Then, what is it all about? 

It’s about creating impactful and engaging content that your audience connects with. The question is, how do you know what content your audience is going to find engaging? Optimizing Pardot emails with A/B Testing functionality is a great way to identify which content your audience engages with the most as well as constantly enhance your campaigns. 

Moreover, with the recent announcements, Pardot's email capabilities have received a significant boost:  

• Beginning in September/ October 2021, all Pardot editions will have more drag-and-drop capabilities.
• Marketers can push emails built-in Lightning Email Builder for use in Engagement Studio programs.
• You can add custom components for the Email Content Builder.

What is Email A/B Testing? 

A/B testing, often known as split testing, is a method of comparing two email versions to see which one performs the best in terms of your selected performance indicator, usually opens or clicks. 

You create two email versions and send them to a portion of your email list. Set a time limit for the split test to run, and then send the winning email version to the rest of your list at the end of the contest. 

You can enable this functionality under the Basic Information tab of your List emails. 

Step 1 

Select whatever section of the email you want to test. The most commonly tested sections are:

Email Subject: Most people use the subject line to decide whether to open the email or not.  Stimulus to do something in order to achieve an aim, also known as a call to action.  

Associated Graphics: You can A/B test the images you use in the email to see which color or graphic performs better.

Personalization: Personalizing content is key to resonating with your audience but you must test and find which way is better to connect with your audience’s emotions.

Headline: When someone opens an email, this is the first thing they see. Making the headline a link is one great thing to experiment with.  

Sender email address: An often overlooked section for A/B testing is to experiment with who's sending the emails and where they're coming from. Sending a tiny part of your emails to a new “from” name and address to see whether it affects your stats is a good idea.

Patience is the key with your A/B testing. It's crucial to test only one thing at a time, as testing numerous things can mask whatever change actually improved things. 

Step 2 

Decide how much of your list you want to focus on. Would you like to test your full email list or just a portion of it? To improve the accuracy of your results, it's best to test the complete list. Otherwise, rather than a statistically significant boost, the winning version could be a product of chance. But it depends on your marketing and potential customer base clarity.

Step 3 

Have well-defined benchmarks. Examine your previous performance and set a target using historical data. For example, if your monthly newsletter's typical open rate is 20%, you may set a goal for your A/B test of 25% open rate. 

Step 4 

Deploy and optimize Run your test, and once you've found a winner, that's the new version you'll have to beat. Keep optimizing and perfecting over a period of time and harness the benefits of automation. 

We have learned here how to strategize your Pardot A/B testing campaign. However, the testing should be done with a sizable database so that you cover all the aspects of the test. In case of any specific requirement, you should not hesitate in taking help from an expert consultant. 

At Growth Natives, our Pardot certified professionals have worked with several customers to automate and optimize their campaigns. We will be happy to help you. You can write to us at info@growthnatives.com. 

Happy Marketing!