The new religion of the email marketing world is A/B testing. It comes up all the time in blogs, books and business classes about outbound marketing. The truth is, testing isn’t new but there are skeptics who fail to see the benefit. Want to know five reasons to test your marketing? If so, please read on.
In fact, the idea of running dual tests for marketing is old news. But for some who are launching products and expanding distribution, it isn’t often their default setting. They just go do stuff without the experimentation.
Testing allows the market to provide you with guidance about what resonates or not. Some recent A/B email tests I ran, produced wildly different results when we tested two different subject lines. The right word or phrase created an open rate that dramatically shifted the success of the campaign.
A client I consult with tested two direct mail pieces that had very subtle differences in the copy inside the package – yet the response rate was 18% higher on one than the other. I can think of five important reasons to test your marketing activities.
Five Reasons to Test Your Way to Marketing Success
DISASTER CHECK: When you test how you package a product to two similar groups, you get a disaster check to make sure that you aren’t offending someone. Through a test using two images, you just might see things from their perspective and learn that one photo sends an unintended message.
Take a few chances with a small test to learn if your are offending a few as you push the envelope. It is far better to do that with a small subset of the audience you want to reach. You might even learn that you aren’t pushing that envelope far enough. Testing gives you a chance to provide your brand the confidence that you won’t have a disaster on your hands. Peace of mind is worth the extra step of a small test.
TOO MANY FEATURES: When you bring a product to market for a specific targeted audience, you might learn that of two options, one is perceived as simpler because the lack of features is a plus. It can be counter-intuitive but you might learn that simpler has more value than complex. Customers buy the benefit, not a laundry list of features. Testing gives the market a chance to respond in the real world or something closer to a real world experience. Test to learn.
TOO MUCH LIKE THE REST: If you are trying to market product like everyone else, a test of something out of the ordinary might give you a clue to the challenges ahead. In being different, you may be different without a purpose. Or, you may have tapped into something different that matters. Testing A versus B can give you a glimpse of how your product will be seen in a competitive framework.
TESTING IS REAL WORLD: Do you really care what everyone in your company thinks about your new product if they never actually buy the product? This narrow-minded world view can be damaging to a brand. A real world test of two ideas allows the target to provide guidance of how to tweak a product. If most of the folks internally like blue, but the market prefers reds and oranges – do you listen to the paying customer or your own internal preferences?
SUBTLE DIFFERENCE MATTER: About 10 years ago I did a direct mail project for 10,000 customers. We tested two versions of the mailing to 250 customers. One got sample A, the other B. The differences in the quality of the paper stock was very subtle – in fact most of my team didn’t even notice it. But, our response rate was much higher for the better paper stock because there was a difficult to express value implied in the touch of the materials packed in the box. The test revealed a subtle difference we might have missed.
So go forth and test. You will learn something and it may help you sleep at night.
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