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Unpopular opinion: I thought 'A/B testing subject lines' was overhyped until a $0 response week changed my mind
I used to roll my eyes every time someone on here talked about A/B testing subject lines. Like, is tweaking three words really gonna make that big a difference? Well, last month I sent out 60 cold emails to local shops in Austin for my web design side gig, and got exactly zero replies. Zero. That hurt. So on a whim, I split my next batch of 40 emails into two groups: one with 'Quick question about your site' and one with 'Your homepage is losing you $200 a month'. The second one got 4 replies in two days. I'm not fully converted to obsessing over every comma, but I get it now. Has anyone else had a specific subject line tweak that just worked like magic for them?
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miaprice17d ago
Right, exactly. I had a similar thing happen with my own cold emails a few months back. I was sending out these super polite, professional subject lines and getting crickets. Then I tried "Quick question about [Client Name]" on one batch and "I have a fix for your site" on another, and the second one tripled my open rate overnight. It's almost annoying how much of a difference it makes because now I can't stop second-guessing every subject line I write. I'm still not gonna run like twelve different tests per campaign, but I definitely don't roll my eyes at it anymore.
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