Question: How can I save time when testing my email designs?

Answer: We’ve all heard about how important testing is when it comes to the design and layout of emails.  But the reality is that in order to benefit from design testing, there’s a large amount of time that must be invested. Unfortunately, the commitment required to successfully test design discourages many marketers from doing it.

I’ve got good news, though.  There are features in ExactTarget that help you save some time in your testing process. 

Whether you’re performing a simple A/B split test or a complex multivariate test, you still have to create multiple versions of a particular email.  But using a combination of templates and stored content in ExactTarget will help you to cut a considerable amount of time out of email creation.  To truly take advantage of these capabilities, I’d recommend that you start by  developing a plan for all of the different email versions that need to be created.  This will help you stay organized and keep track of your testing progress.

Once your testing plan has been set, you can analyze the similarities that exist between the different design versions.  For example, your emails may be using the same creative shell with a different content layout – or the same layout with different elements present and not present.

Take these similarities into account when creating your templates, and code them to be scaleable to fit a number of different content possibilities instead of creating a separate template for each layout.  Keep in mind that there will always be occasions when you need a separate template, but you can save time by having one template that will work for multiple emails.

Once you have created your template(s), the next step is to build out your content boxes. This can be done from within an email, or from directly within the Content Library.  In ExactTarget, any pieces of content that you need to include in multiple versions can be created once, saved, and then retrieved later on.  To store a content box in an email you can click on the “Store Content” button. You can then bring this stored content into an empty content box by clicking the “Retrieve Content” button. Using this method you can create additional email versions considerably faster than by populating each box one at a time.

Another time saver is to create emails using the “Revise Existing Email” option, which creates a copy of any email you have already created. You can then add, remove, or reposition elements to generate you next email version to test.

Through careful planning and employing the methods mentioned above, you will be able to design and create multiple emails in far less time than creating them one by one.  And at the end of the day, the more emails you have to create and test, the more you stand to benefit!

Tim Siukola
Senior Email Campaign Manager