Testing enables marketers to focus on successful campaigns and improve every time

Oxford, Oxon -- (SBWire) -- 07/25/2011 --Only with an ongoing testing strategy can email marketers identify failures and successes specific to their dataset, and then focus on the successes to improve response. Yet the Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census 2011 shows only a third of UK companies (32%) carry out regular testing for email marketing – which means most are broadcasting emails to their database, blindly accepting that they could be failing, with little scope to improve response rates.

The research also shows most testing that is carried out is around subject lines and spam testing, while only 40% carry out any A/B split testing. The importance of testing must not be downplayed - nothing is as effective at improving campaign metrics and ROI as testing. Testing email marketing means users can work out what works best for their audience, brand and organisation.

Henry Hyder-Smith, MD at Adestra says: “Testing should be a part of every email programme and it’s our job as an ESP to make the process as easy as possible for our clients. Each email campaign is an opportunity to learn and improve. In a simple A/B split-test, identifying which dataset has the higher response rate, and which is a failure (with the lower response rate), can lift ROI with every single email campaign.”

With this is mind, Adestra has improved its split-testing feature as part of its new MessageFocus email marketing platform. Now marketers can easily incorporate testing with every campaign via an easy-to-use interface, in addition to seeing results in real-time as recipients react.

Complete email testing options with MessageFocus:
The MessageFocus split testing feature provides users with flexible options for testing different campaign variations. Tests can be as simple as a subject line A/B split test, or more complex multi-variant testing of the email content itself. This flexible feature allows users to send to all or a proportion of a list, with the option to automatically send the best performing variation to the rest of the list.

What can you test?
Users can test many elements from the campaign options, such as subject line and ‘from’ address, or you can test the email content itself. Users can easily run A/B split tests or multi-variant tests depending on their requirements.

How does it work?
Using the MessageFocus interface, marketers can easily create and manage their campaign variants with just a few clicks. Simply start by creating a campaign and then creating variations using Adestra’s easy-to-use editors. No HTML knowledge is required.

How does the reporting work?
Users will be able to see the individual results for each variant of the test, so they can easily analyse results, plus an overall report for the campaign.

Benefits
• Simple and easy-to-use interface: allowing users to create variants quickly and easily.
• See the results in real-time: Watch how customers react to each offer in real time and optimise content and offers.
• The best performing campaign wins: Automatically sends the highest performing campaign to the rest of the list.
• Improve results: Even simple tests will help to improve your campaign performance and ROI.

MessageFocus is Adestra’s enterprise, web-based email marketing platform. For further details visit http://www.adestra.com/

Press Contacts
Jim Buchanan – PR Consultant, jim.buchanan@adestra.com , +44 (0) 7725 257194
Reena Mistry – Marketing Director, reena.mistry@adestra.com, +44 (0)1865 242425

About Adestra
Founded in 2004, Adestra set out to be the most respected Email Service Provider. Today, Adestra is a market leader, with offices in Oxford, London and New York. Over 300 organisations globally and more than 4,500 marketers across most sectors, work with our technology, people and deliverability solutions to generate effective email marketing that deliver results.

Our Technology: Developed entirely in-house by our staff, Adestra’s MessageFocus gives clients an extremely scalable and configurable email service platform that consistently delivers.

Our People: We seek to provide the highest possible levels of technical customer support and intelligent, innovative consultation. Our approach to client service has helped us to maintain our client retention rate at 98.7%, something we are very proud of.

Our Deliverability: Adestra offer a very honest approach to deliverability, quite simply there is no silver bullet. Our inbox placement rate, which peaks at 99.8% and our expertise, gives your emails the best chance of arriving in the destination inbox.

Why not give us a call on +44 (0)1865 242425 or email us on moreinfo@adestra.com to discuss how we can help you to deliver results on your email marketing campaigns. Adestra’s product and corporate information is located at http://www.adestra.com