‘what if you deliberately included sold out product photos in your emails?’

This is a much more subtle (but no less powerful) way to add urgency than using text like, “hurry! act now! buy now!” That kind of text is typically not appreciated by spam filters. Or humans. I like the way you think, Linda.

Not convinced? I like the way you think, too. A/B test your content, then.

Seriously, I had to wash my fingers after typing such nasty stuff, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for a day or two.

In addition to the yuckiness, I typed in a bunch of stuff about gambling, and some phishing type content. And I made sure to use all caps, with lots of exclamation points (see why spam filters hate that).

Then I ran it through our Inbox Inspector’s Spam Checker tool…

Turns out I passed all the major spam filters!

My Spam Assassin score wasn’t great (anything over a 5 is DOA but I like to stay well below 3). But that seems to be because of other problems.

In terms of the extremely disgusting alt-text descriptions I used, they don’t seem to have triggered anything at all:

Got any questions you want the MailChimp team to answer here on the blog? Submit them here.

Learn more about MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector:

Click to see the winner

When I created this email newsletter, I had two different subject line ideas:

A) MonkeyWrench – Autoresponders, Turks, Freshbooks, and Webhooks

B) Turks, Freshbooks, autoresponders, and webhooks

Quick – Can you  guess which subject line got more opens? Turns out it got more clicks and fewer bounces, too!

Luckily, there’s no need to guess with MailChimp’s patent-pending built-in A/B testing tool. It’s totally automatic. I’ll show you how it works…

Log in to MailChimp, and click on the big orange “Create Campaign” button. Choose the “A/B split” option:

Next, you’ll be asked to setup your A/B test:

the setup page is pretty straightforward, but let’s break it down into pieces.

First, tell MailChimp what you want to test. I’m testing 2 subject lines:

Next, tell MailChimp how many subscribers you want to test on. Pick a random slice of your list that’s enough to make you feel confident about the results. I usually pick 20% of my list, but that might be different based on your list size.

You just drag the little slider left and right:

In the scenario above, MailChimp will randomly select 10% of my list, and send subject line A, and another random 10% will get subject line B.

Next, tell MailChimp how it should choose the winner:

Above, I’m telling MailChimp to “Wait 6 hours, then look at open rates. Whichever subject line got more opens, use that for the remaining 80% of my list.” You can make it wait only 1 hour, or stretch it out to several days if you want. I think 6 hours is long enough. Plus, I’m kind of impatient. If you like complete control over everything, choose “manually” and MailChimp won’t automatically send anything. You can log in and choose the winner. But where’s the fun in that?

Anyway, next I just go about creating my email campaign like I normally do, except when it’s time to enter my subject line, I get two boxes:

Plug in my two subject line ideas, and I’m done.

I then scheduled the campaign to send at 9am ET on Monday morning.

Then, I just sit back and wait. MailChimp does all the rest for me.

No need to generate random slices of my list, then generate more random slices, then generate the remainder of my list, and no need to build 2 separate campaigns, then a 3rd winning campaign. It’s just automatic. It’s so easy, you can run A/B tests on every campaign you send. Always be testing!

It saves me a ton of time, so that I can do other stuff.

Like blog about what I just did.

Also See: Those who A/B test get 10% better open rates

it was SO refreshing to start receiving subject lines like this…

I actually thought about BUYING a heart-shaped pizza on Valentine’s Day too (I’m not a romantic guy, huh?). Don’t worry, I didn’t.

84 slices of pepperoni? I clicked just to see what that would look like.  Turns out not that appetizing. But if I’m ever craving pepperoni, I’ll probably remember Papa John’s now.

It’s not easy thinking of new subject lines when you’re sending daily or weekly emails. Maybe it’s impossible, and you have to save the good ones for special occasions.

See also:

Ever want to test two different subject lines against each other? Try our patent-pending automagic A/B tester:

She offers nice tips on:

• What kind of from-name to use
• How to craft a subject line with a little urgency
• Designing RSVP buttons (big, red, beveled buttons don’t work)
• Logistics info you need to include

Great advice there. Hat tip to Tamara Gielen for the link.

When you’re crafting and testing email invitations, it helps to do some A/B testing (try different from-names, subject lines, and email designs). MailChimp makes A/B testing easy, with our patent-pending automatic A/B tester.

What happened to love? Or is love too much? Lookie how Octane Coffee says “love” without saying “love:”

Spotted in the right column of Batchbook CRM’s January email newsletter.