If you want to take your marketing campaigns to the next level, you've got to test them. How do you do that? With A/B testing. It's sometimes called split testing. What is A/B testing? It's basically comparing two versions of a web page, email or banner to see which one performs better.
You can compare these by showing the two variants, calling them A and B, to similar visitors simultaneously. See which one gives the best conversion rate and then use that one moving forward! It's simple, but also necessary.
Learn more about what A/B testing is and why to do it in this great video from Krista Seiden and Rotimi Iziduh at Google:
It's important to test emails. Testing can result in increased opens, clicks and conversions, so it's key to have a structured A/B testing program and to keep improving these practices.
There are pitfalls to avoid when A/B testing. Avoid either:
a) testing elements that are not repeatable or
b) false positives and uncorrelated data
It's important to monitor elements that can be generally repeated and put an emphasis on looking at statistical significance.
What are those things? Here are a few things you can regularly test on a site or email marketing template:
- Animated GIF vs. static hero image: Animated gifs are useful when used tastefully for grabbing attention and driving clicks. Test some creatives with animation versus their static versions within the main hero image of the site or email.
- Text vs. creative: Sites and emails usually perform best with attractive visual elements. That being said, it's possible that heavily text-based designs with fewer creative design elements can sometimes outperform heavily image-based sites or emails. Therefore, you need to run tests of text versus creative-based templates. Ultimately the results could drive you to incorporate a hybrid, more text-copy elements in addition to the existing imagery.
- Hero only vs. hero + products: Another valuable test with your emails is to send an email with only the main hero image versus one that also includes a selection of your products or services below. The majority of clicks tend to go through the hero call-to-action, so it’s useful to compare if the product selection drives more aggregate clickthroughs or if the conversion rates on product links are higher. And you can even see which template results in higher overall conversions. This is a test to run several times to get meaningful results.
- Call-to-action colors: This a simple test of changing the call-to-action colors to test which version works best and to attract more clicks.
- Call-to-action text copy: Similar to the one above, but you modify the copy of the CTA to see what works best.
Try using these tips to get started, and structure your campaigns based on sound data that will get you the highest ROI and conversion rates for your marketing efforts.
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