As I have said before, when creating an email marketing campaign, testing is crucial to make sure you are reaching the most people as possible and obtaining the highest ROI.

In a recent article by Jack Loechner, he discussed the results on a study that examined the use of analytics in email marketing campaigns. None of these findings really surprised me.

Here is a brief summary of the findings:

* 33% of marketers who don’t test their emails say it’s because they don’t know how and 27% don’t because they don’t have time.

* More than 50% of marketers improved their ROI by testing.  (This statistic alone should be enough for someone to see just how more effective your email campaign(s) can be just by testing.)

* For marketers who do test, here is what they are testing:

1. 85.2% test subject lines

2. 54.8 % test calls to action

3. 50.9% test designs

4.  49.1% test copy

5. 41.7% test offers

6. 36.8% test timing of campaigns

In a past post, I discussed how to make an email campaign more effective. I specifically talked about how important testing the subject line and the time of day you send your email is. Remember, you want to test for the tone and personality of your subject line and you should generally send your email between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (I have found Thursdays work best).

I feel that testing the call to action is 100% dependent on your company– not all email campaigns can have more than one call to action. So, I am a little surprised with that number being so high.

I love how so many people are testing designs. Seeing what attracts your target audience’s attention is  important, especially because these findings can dramatically change the way you design all your future email campaigns.

I wonder if this survey asked  questions about what testing methods were NOT working. In addition to knowing what does work, I find it can be just as helpful for email marketers to know which things they should avoid.