I gotta tell you: I love split testing and more marketers should be using it.

What’s a split test (aka A/B test), you ask? Imagine you have a deployment scheduled but you just can’t decide which one to send. It could be a different subject line or a different image in the sweet spot of the email, but something’s distinctively different. But you can’t decide which one to send because THEY ARE BOTH THAT AWESOME.

Well, split test it and send both! See which one performs better by sending out to equal parts or a small percentage of your list and then based on the winner, deploy to the rest of the group. Both options are available in SendLabs with a ‘winner’ determined by either open rates or clicks: your choice.

Basically, it’s the equivalent of a newspaper ad in which you can test two headlines or a magazine that isn’t sure what supermodel will sell more on the cover. No other industry and marketing medium allows you this flexibility. It’s so easy to do and can tell you a ton about what is moving the meter with your list.

I am working on a case study for our new friends at Wood Pellets.com about some split testing they had us do a few weeks ago. They had a campaign that we sent over five days and we used split testing on Tuesday-Thursday, using Monday and Friday to set the open rate standards (I call them campaign open and close metrics) for the week. After one day, we’d put the winner up against a new subject line that was more generic or specific and so on to the next day. This rolling effect ensured that we always were picking the hottest one based on that previous day’s result.

Obviously, the list or offer can have huge effects but the numbers don’t lie. Think about it: you could test with a small sample group for every campaign and if a campaign bombs with them, change it before you waste your time with the rest of your list.

The result with Wood Pellets? With nine campaigns, they had five hit open rates of more than 25% – peaking at over 30% for a few. Four of their campaigns had click-throughs in the double digits. In other words, what we did worked by looking at the daily open rates based on the subject lines in our split tests.

Need help? Ask us. There’s no excuse for you not to be doing this and realizing huge success.

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

“Do you offer advice on developing a mobile version of an email as more and more of my customers are retrieving emails on their mobile devices?” is a question I’m starting to get more and more. As an able-bodied email marketer, you’re probably thinking, “Great…in addition to creating an HTML and text version of my campaigns, I have to start creating a mobile friendly versions of your emails?”

Here’s where I think all this is going:

My belief is that one day all mobile gadgets will come with a fully-supported email client, similar to what the iPhone has now (I have one and it renders emails flawlessly). It just makes too much sense and it handles email as good as any desktop would. It’s common sense if you think about it: mobile operators want to sell more data plans and manufacturers want to sell more phones. It’s in both groups interests to see mobile email catch on…which means making it better, easier-to-use and more like the desktop experience.

Unfortunately, there are no current widely adopted standards when it comes to email marketing on mobile devices. Primarily, a text-based version of the email would make the most sense with perhaps a link above your email that says “Viewing this on a mobile device? Click here.” I actually received this bit of advice from a savvy prospect evaluating SendLabs that I have been talking to recently. He asked during a demo if we provided a simple way to let subscribers link to a mobile version of the email, similar to how we let you put a message at the top that says, “Can’t view images? Click here to view online”.

I really liked this idea and brought it to my development team to implement. Essentially you will be able to put a message at the top of your emails that reads: ‘Viewing on a mobile device?’ This will link them to the text version of your email online, ensuring they get the message and not a bunch of code. Stay tuned as we put this together and I’ll be sure to let know when it is available.

(Side note: Now you really need to make sure you format a nice looking text-only email!)

We also offer an inbox rendering tool which includes how your emails will render in the most popular mobile applications. Finally, I hope this article will help you understand the “state” of the industry and email marketing in mobile phones.

Brett Houle is Co-Founder/CEO of SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him up at Twitter: @heybrett and @sendlabs.