Email Marketing Best Practices: A/B Testing & Personalization

1. Strongmail New Features & Best Practices New Media TeamMarketing Services

2. A/B Split Testing A/B Split Test mailings allow you to test individual elements within a mailing to see if one version performs better than another. It provides a controlled method of determining the effectiveness of changes within an email that can influence response rates.Testing Examples: • Subject line: open rate • Button vs. text link: highest click-through rate (CTR) • Call-to-action placement • Personalization vs. no personalization • Sending at different times of day or days of the week • Template or Format: Text, Layout, Images, Promo Boxes Winner vs. Non-winner: • Winner: Large list size. Send versions A and B to a small portion of the list and then send the winner version to the remainder of the list. Wait at least 48 hours to send the winner version to the remainder. • Non-winner: Small list size. 50% of list receives version A and 50% receives version B.

3. A/B Split Testing • Guidelines: • List size should be big enough to get statistically significant results (min. 1,000 recipients). • Hard count and percentage-based testing options. • A/B testing functionality can generate 2 or more different splits per test mailing. • However, only one variable should be tested at a time.

4. A/B Split Testing

5. Mailbox IQ • Measures user stats for desktop, application, and mobile. • Insertion of one pixel by one pixel transparent image at the bottom of the email template. • The metric is tracked when the email is opened & the pixel is loaded. • Mobile is growing consistently as the lead, and iPhones and iPads are the most popular mobile devices. • Different populations will have different results. • Should only be used with email campaigns, not single emails. • Metrics determine behavior & engagement based on activity and can be used to measure trends over time. • Results can be used to drive design business decisions to optimize your template for the audience. <imgsrc="http://miq.troweprice.com/C320R105A.gif?pvci=RPS_SPN_425_042413 width="1" height="1" alt=" " />

6. Mailbox IQ Device tracking report

7. Mailbox IQ Email client reporting

8. Personalization An email marketing best practice feature is the ability to generate a personalized email to an individual recipient. StrongMail offers Content Blocks to add an unprecedented level of relevance to your messages. StrongMail'sContent Blocks is a tool that uses dynamic segments and text-based tokens to insert reusable content or dynamic content from your data; personalized text and graphics, directly into your email template.Personalization can be used in a variety of ways, such as: • swapping out Sender Name, Sender Email, Reply Email • swapping out signatures or contact information • recipient’s first name to insert a personalized salutation or personalized body copy

9. Personalization • Guidelines: • In order for personalization to function properly, the data associated with the email must be provided • Personalization corresponding to a recipient’s email address must be provided in a .csv file • Additional variable content such as unique sender or contact information can be provided in a Word document with the jobs markup

10. Automated multi-stage event-triggered email marketing delivering relevant communications based on behavior: • Currently in testing phase • Meant for ongoing campaigns • Setting exact times for launch is not possible • If a recipient clicks or opens an email, it will automatically send another email to them or will stop sending Lifecycle Marketing

11. Outlook 2010 • Why does my email look different? • With the release of Outlook 2007 & 2010, Microsoft switched to Microsoft Office Word as a rendering engine for both reading and composing e-mails in Outlook from its previous versions that used Internet Explorer to view e-mails. • Microsoft’s decision to avoid using a browser to render HTML ignores standards-based e-mail design & allows less control for e-mail designers over how HTML e-mails are rendered, & Adobe Acrobat proofs created from these e-mails do not accurately display the way the e-mail is actually viewed in the preview pane. • The most common issue this has caused for us is white space and gaps, especially surrounding button rendering, however this does not extend to the actual e-mail display, only the PDF output

12. Outlook 2010 • Outlook 2010 does not support: • Padding values & failure of the tops of cells to line up properly resulting in cut off background colors. i.e.: white lines • Formatting: Word applies its own print based formatting that applies automatic page breaks and gaps in the layout of long e-mails with a lot of content • Outlook 2010 adds a one pixel gap under (or over) every image inside a table cell • Font rendering– resulting in letters cut off in proofs • Background images & shadowed edges • Borders on images • Animated Gifs, JavaScript & Flash • Forms • Wrapped text & Justified text • Middle text alignment alongside images & image resizing • Automatic letter spacing

13. Email Template Library • Exploring a more templated approach to direct clients to a ready to go pre-approved template library for quick blasts. • The library contains categories such as alerts and invitations broken down by Business Unit. Explore on GlobalNet: https://home2.troweprice.com/sbs/docs/DOC-17662

14. Questions? We are happy to answer any questions, help develop ideas, attend meetings, collaborate on projects & provide examples. EP_HTML_Email_Team@troweprice.com