Are You Losing 50% of Your Email Revenue by Not Personalizing?

This week I ran a simple A/B test of subject line personalization. I used the same subject line for both emails, except I included the first name at the beginning of the subject line for 50% of the recipients. As expected the open rate was higher for the personalized subject line. There were 10% more opens for the email with personalization. The bump in opens is often the reason people personalize subject lines.

There was also a bump in clicks. Of course since there were more opens there should be more clicks, but the increase in clicks went beyond the 10% subject line jump. There were 18% more clicks from the personalized subject line. It appears as if the personalization snowballed over to the clicks.

The results continued to snowball as I looked at the revenue. There was a jump in average revenue per conversion of 40% on the personalized subject line, which calculated to $168 more spent per person. Finally, the increase in total revenue came out to 102% more for the personalized subject line. That’s a huge increase in revenue for something that is only one word different.

I routinely see subject line A/B tests lead to huge conversion differences. It’s always interesting to watch a subject lines affect all the way down the line. It is not abnormal for them to snowball down to higher conversion rates. Including something as simple as a first name is an easy optimization that everyone should test.