Every. Time. At Spike, AB Testing stands Always Be Testing. Once you have a consistent frequency you can then test and run experiments constantly either using part or all of your customer database. That way you’re always improving your response and getting as close as you can to be sending the right stuff to the right people at the right time.
As your list size allows, you should split test every campaign. Larger lists can test a variety of components more easily, as the reduction in subscriber count can make the information unreliable with smaller lists. But even a smaller list can still test subject lines or one area that can feed the data and knowledge for subsequent campaigns.
Every campaign, test your subject line. What you think is interesting and would make you open an email may not be the same for your audience.
Frequently test your send day and time. I like to use Mailchimp’s time optimizer to get the hour correct, but I try different days. I find that weekend sends are frequently opened more no matter what industry you’re in.
Every day is a school day…. and considering Mailchimp makes it soo easy to test, it makes sense not to take advantage of it.
However, if you’ve got a very small list, please avoid jumping to conclusions… look for indications over time… so test a series of emails, one with Emojii’s in the subject line, one without, and see over time if one works better… it’s easy to say “that one worked… I’ll use that all the time”, without getting ‘statistical validity’ (a posh way of saying it’s certain).
