testing tactics & strategies - communicator corp...i didn’t fail the test, i just found 100...
TRANSCRIPT
TESTING TIMESTESTING TACTICS & STRATEGIES
CONTENTS
These Are Testing Times 3
Testing, Testing 123 3
Types of Testing 5
Single Variable Testing 5
Multi-Variable Testing 5
What to Test 6
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail 7
I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong! 8
Will your emails stand the test of time? 8
Conclusion 9
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THESE ARE TESTING TIMES
It’s true what they say; ‘Email Marketing is King’!
With direct mail, you can’t be sure whether your mailer’s been delivered and if it has, if it’s headed straight for the recycle bin. With TV, you’re spending a fortune with very little guarantee of who’s watching and with print ads, you’re often helping to keep media publications alive.
However with email, you know exactly which messages have been opened, by whom, the links they clicked on, and which part of your message is engaging your audience.With every email you send there’s an opportunity for you to engage, educate and sell to your target audience.
One of the great un-sung benefits of email marketing is the ability to test what works and what doesn’t before sending communications to your customers and prospects. Through a test you have an opportunity to find out more about what makes your audience tick (and eventually click).
This guide will illustrate how testing can help you to get better results from your email campaigns and will look to ensure that testing becomes a crucial part of every campaign.
TESTING, TESTING 123
Before we start, it’s key that you understand why testing is important and the benefits it can bring if done correctly. What’s apparent is that email marketers don’t always appreciate the benefits of testing – with over two thirds not testing regularly (Econsultancy, 2014).
Here are three simple ways testing can help you to achieve your objectives:
1. Look into the crystal ball – All marketers would like a crystal ball to look into the future and at their customer behaviour. Testing gives you insight by showing you how your database is likely to respond before you send the email.
2. Never test the depth of the water with both feet - You wouldn’t jump in to the absolute unknown with both feet so you should apply the same principles to your emails and test the water first. Use testing to ensure that what you’re doing is going to work before you do it and use the opportunity to fix any problems or challenges with the tactics you’ve chosen before sending your campaign to your full mailing list.
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3. Show me the money - Testing increases ROI because it gives you the opportunity to analyse your campaigns and you can ensure they’re as engaging and relevant as possible. What’s more, a recent survey by Econsultancy asked participants how valuable they found certain methods for improving conversion rates and results indicated that email marketers put testing at the top of the list and agree that it’s a valuable method for improving conversion rates.
WHY AREN’T MARKETERS TESTING?
In 2013 only 5% of organisations were carrying out more than 10 tests per month on their email campaigns, down from 11% in 2012 (Econsultancy). The whole process of testing is, generally speaking, easy for email marketers to initiate and low cost, yet for many a lack of testing all comes down to the same problem – not enough time in the day.
However these are ‘testing times’:
• 182 billion emails are sent each day around the world
• The average business user sends or receives 108 emails a day
• The average consumer receives almost 30 emails per day
Therefore competition for a recipient’s attention is higher than ever and it’s all the more important that you make time to test.
Many marketers rely heavily on best practice advice, forgetting that it assumes that all consumers basically want the same things and all businesses have the same goals. One approach for all just doesn’t cut it anymore. Had we all followed the advice that ‘Consumers Click on Marketing Emails Most on Friday’ we’d all stop sending and wait until the end of the working week to click send. It’s time to figure out what works for your individual business and audience.
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A/B testing
Multivariate testing
Usability testing
Customer journey analysis
Segmentation
Website personalisation
Event-triggered / behavioural email
Expert usability reviews
Online surveys / customer feedback
Copy optimisation
Competitor benchmarking
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Car abandonment analysis
Abandonment email
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TYPES OF TESTING
There are two methods you can use to test your email campaigns: single variable testing and multi-variable testing.
SINGLE VARIABLE TESTINGOften referred to as A/B testing or split testing, this technique involves testing two content variations to determine the better of the two. Testing only one variable at any given time ensures a clear understanding of how improvements to metrics were achieved. This process looks to test the success of an email based on open rate, click-through rate and conversation rate.
Single variable testing is recommended if your emails are performing relatively well or in line with industry standard and you’re looking to achieve small, regular improvements to your results.
MULTI-VARIABLE TESTINGTheoretically, multi-variable testing measures the effectiveness of limitless combinations. However, by testing a significant number of variables at once, it makes it more difficult to attribute success to one particular element of the email campaign.
Multi-variable testing is beneficial if your current email campaigns are ‘far off the mark’ and you’re mindful that a completely new approach is probably necessary to see any improvement in results.
The methodology for multi-variant testing is as follows:
• Select at least two elements
• Change only one item in each element, such as call to action, images, title or copy
• Elements must be independent of each other
• Elements must be significantly different to enable clear lessons to be learnt
New Tab
Example of Multi Variable Testing
Test: Variants Of Headlines
Test: Variants of Call To Action
Test: Variants Of Offer Text
Test: Variants Of Header Image
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WHAT TO TEST
1. Time & day – Find out if your audience is more likely to engage with an email at a particular time or day of the week.
2. From address – Experiment with the use of your company name or try a person’s name as an alternative.
3. Subject line – Analyse how length, tone or personalisation affect results.
4. A witty one liner – Try the likes of comedy, emotion and intrigue in your headlines.
5. Make it personal – Study the use of personalisation; use of the recipients first name is usually a good place to start.
6. Pictures say a thousand words - How do images and the type of images affect your email results?
7. Call to actions – Experiment with prominence, placement and the message to find out what works best.
8. Content – Measure how the tone and length of content impact the performance of emails.
9. Take a break – Can the use of bullets and numbers make content more digestible for your audience?
10. Speak the language – Use dynamic content to find out if customers become more engaged as a result of increasingly relevant messages.
11. Email layout – Mix things up a little and try different layouts to see how the results are affected.
12. Email design – Experiment with design; don’t forget to think outside of the box as you look to further engage your audience.
13. Deal or no deal? - Test your offers, deals and discounts. For example, do your customers respond better to 50% off or half price deals?
14. Offer exclusives – Try giving something unique to your database as a thank you for their interest.
15. Go social – Experiment with the use of social links and social shares.
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IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU ARE PLANNING TO FAILNow that you know the benefits of testing and what can be tested, it’s time to consider the fundamentals and make a plan to ensure success:
1. First define what you would like to achieve from your email campaigns and the hypothesis you would like to test. Keep your business objectives front of mind and ensure that you strive to achieve them primarily. Your defined goal and hypothesis could include;
• Goal: Increase email open rates by 20%. Hypothesis: Subject lines are not engaging enough
• Goal: Increase click-through rates to the website. Hypothesis: Call to actions are not visible enough
• Goal: Increase purchases/conversions. Hypothesis: The imagery does not represent the offering
2. Decide whether to run a single variable or multi-variable test based upon your objectives. You’ll also need to consider how you’ll dispatch the winning email – will the best performing email be scheduled to send automatically or would you like to analyse the results yourself before dispatching to the remainder of your database?
3. Test big sample sizes so that, in practice, the sample can determine the statistical power of your test. The sample size is of paramount importance to any empirical study in which the aim is to make inferences about a population from a sample.
4. Let it be – depending on your objectives you need to decide how long the test will run before you monitor the results. In most cases we recommend 24 hours as this gives recipients plenty of time to check their inbox.
5. Analyse and document the results – keep a log of what you’ve tested and the results you get so that you can apply the findings in the future. Here are the minimum stats we suggest you record:
• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
By the end of this process we hope you’ve created an email that fulfils your objectives and satisfies your audience.
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I DIDN’T FAIL THE TEST, I JUST FOUND 100 WAYS TO DO IT WRONG! We encourage you to remember that there’s nothing wrong with finding out what doesn’t work for your audience through the process of testing. Testing is never in vain if it tells you what your target audience don’t like or what you’ve been doing wrong all along – you won’t repeat the same mistakes again and eventually you’ll find something that does work.
Insight into what doesn’t work for your audience can be just as powerful as knowing what does. If your test illustrates that your emails are not up to scratch then don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board and try something different before sending the email.
WILL YOUR EMAILS STAND THE TEST OF TIME? Many brands out there claim to know their customers inside and out but it’s important to ensure that your learning never stops. We encourage continuous testing to ensure that your emails are always relevant to your audience.
The lessons you’ve learned from testing will date over time, as your audience will change or become more or less reactive to different things. Similarly if you only ever apply the findings of your historic tests then your emails will become stale. Remember to be innovative and aim to find multiple ways of engaging your audience.
There’s always more to learn and therefore more to test. With this in mind it’s important to remember that good can become great – never be satisfied, continuously strive for better email communications and employ the use of continuous testing to ensure you‘re always on the lookout for improvements.
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CONCLUSIONIf marketers could test their direct mail, TV adverts or new websites before going live we’re sure they would, yet many don’t test their email campaigns. It’s important to remember that in most cases your audience have opted in to receive your communications and this is them telling you that they’re interested in your offering and they want to know more. These people are already warmed and ready to engage, so why risk sending messages that might not satisfy them?
Testing your emails can have an unrivalled impact on the success of your campaigns and it’s time that we stopped using lack of time as an excuse not to send emails that are up to scratch. Communicator enables you to quickly and easily test campaigns and we also partner with Litmus so that you can ensure your content’s up to scratch too.
Never stop testing and you’ll never stop learning. Continuous improvements can be yours if you only invest some time. If you’re sending any other digital campaigns, try applying some of the methods we’ve discussed to these too and see how you can improve results elsewhere.
Get In touch : communicatorcorp.com
@ CommCorp
+44 (0)844 8708971