Many times in your business you must have wonder that when you have good product, good content, you have got perfect leads then why are you not getting your desired results. What is that which is not working or working? Trust me we all have faced this predicament at some time in our business life.
The problem is that you are not doing A/B testing.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing (also called split testing) is comparing different samples of anything to see which one is working better. In case of email marketing through A/B testing you can check which email brings more conversions. A/B testing is nothing but testing two independent objects at the same time with the varying conditions and checking the end results. It is less commonly used the tool in Digital Marketing as there are always new tools that are getting into the business. In the previous time, it would have been expensive to use A/B testing for the magazine but with the upcoming of Digital Marketing, A/B testing’s costs are low and done well. There are few points which you need to know about A/B testing:
• It is also known as Split Testing or Bucket Testing.
• It is a method of comparing two website apps against each other to check which one is better and quicker.
• Statistical Analysis is provided to perform basic Conversion goals.
• By measuring the results, you may implement the changes so that it would function better.
Benefits of A/B testing
A/B testing is a very effective tool to figure out what’s working and what’s not. It can be used for testing everything on your website. Well-planned A/B testing can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Narrowing down the most effective elements of a promotion, and then combining them, can obviously make your marketing efforts much more profitable and successful. Here is the first in a series of posts covering A/B testing that we’ll be publishing in the coming weeks.
Using email automation software like mailchimp, aweber, and active campaign you can easily figure what’s working what’ not.
A/B testing reduces the chances of failure and gives you a better understanding of your customers’ psychology. You can improve tremendously if you perform A/B testing correctly and take benefit of it.
Before performing A/B testing you must have a clear understanding of what are the outcomes you desire from the test
A/B testing is the most talked thing in Digital Marketing but hardly very few marketers use this for their website performance but if it used in the right manner, it can lead you to the following benefits:
Improved Content:
After the analysis and testing is being done, all you are left with is the content which is valuable to you since the content is most liked by the visitors and as you go on testing further, your content will be richer.
Lower Risks:
If you are thinking to put up your money on the website without analyzing and testing, it might be risky. A/B testing helps companies target resources for maximum results, increasing the ROI (Return on Investment), whether it is defined in the short-term success or long-term customer loyalty.
Leads to more profitable business:
Since A/B testing works on the data values over opinions and also implementation is done instead of Debate. Thus, companies are profitable when these results are optimized and implemented.
Are you running an on-site test, or an off-site test? If you’re running an on-site test, you’ll want to think of all the sales-related pieces of your website, and then figure out which elements you want to test.
With off-site tests, you’re probably testing either an ad, or a sales email. Testing ad copy to see which ad brings in more converting visitors can help you focus your advertising efforts.
Things you can test in a mail.
1. Subject
your subject line plays the most important factor in whether a person will open your mail or not. You must do A/B testing for your subject line.
There are some variables regarding which you can perform A/B testing:
The top 3 variables are:
- Personalization vs. No Personalization
- “You” vs. No “You”
- Long vs. Short Subject Lines
2. Paragraph Text
It is your test body which encourages the customer to take the next step. Your body should be written in such a way that it convince your consumer that they need to have your product.
top 3 variables to test in your email body are:
- Long text vs. Short text
- Hard Sell vs. Soft Sell
- Personal vs. Formal
Call to Action text
It is important to add call to action your e-mail. Your customer should have a clear understanding on what is that you want them to do.
Test your emails for variations like these:
- Action words (i.e. “Sign up” vs. “Book your Free demo”)
- Offer (i.e. “Coupon A” vs. “Coupon B” – create a coupon code A and a coupon code B to track results) call to action was not in direct reach.
3. Call to Action Button
Placement of your call to action button should be done carefully. It is seen that most people do not go further due to
CTA placement (i.e. “Top right corner” vs. “End of text”)
4. Images
There’s good reason to send out emails with text only. Text only is easier to view on mobile – and61% of brand emails are viewed on phones and tablets.
There’s good reason to send out emails with visuals and text too. Visuals can make your email much more appealing. 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to carry more weight than product information or customer ratings.
To get the best results, send out your A/B test to a large portion of your targeted email list – if not your entire list.
5. Test your timings
Testing time at which users more often open their mail is very important. You’ll find that your recipient respond to mails on some particular day more or at some particular time of the day.
Test your emails for these variations:
- Day of week (i.e. “Monday” vs. “saturday”)
- Time of day (i.e. “7-9am” vs. “6-9pm” – and factor in any time differences your markets have)
- Frequency (i.e. “once a week” vs. “twice a week”)
Tools for Testing:
Most marketing campaigns have built-in tools for A/B testing. Some of the tools are:
- Campaign Monitor
- MailChimp
- Active Campaign
If your software doesn’t have active support for A/B testing, you can set this up manually. Simply, split your list into two separate lists, send one list to the marketing tool and another one to the other list. After that, you just need to compare the results manually, through statistical analysis and even compare too
Things to remeber for successful A/B testing
1. Devote time
A/B testing is not a one trick game, so you need to be patient and need to do different A/B test at different point of time. you might sometime need to wait a little to get results, do not get discouraged if your test comes negative as their no limit you can test as much as you like.
If you devote time and perform tasks with a good strategy you will surely get good results soon.
2. Do not test too much at same time
Yes you can test more than one thing at a time but do not go overboard and test too many things as you will not be able to determine which factors worked and which did not.
If you are setting two three in a single mail then you can name your sample as A, B and C and later on compare as Avs B, B vs.C, A vs. C
3. Do not offer false deals
This is one mistake many people make thinking that they are just performing a test so what is the need of giving real deals. While performing A/B testing remember that you are performing the test on your real audience and if you have something written and mail and then that deal is not on your website you will get negative publicity.
Few disadvantages of A/B Testing:
Although A/B testing is used widely in the companies that aim for a higher success but there are some of the factors which are not favorable to the users whether they are regarding cost factor, or quality factor. So our study has revealed some of the negative aspects of the A/B Testing:
- A/B Testing involves the sacrificing of some conversions as a part of the experiment as it requires the process of two different versions. So, even if you have a pretty wonderful setup of your web page, you have to make some changes to use A/B testing.
- A/B Testing is quite costly as we have to determine the elements its needs to get changed and tested. Also, if we create the alternate versions of the web page, the cost gets higher and higher. Also, depending on the traffic level, it might take a while to load or to analyze the results.
- A/B testing measure only the quantity, not quality. This means it counts the binary value, as decided by the results. So, even if a web page has a bad GUI but is still liked by the visitors, A/B testing would be useless as it doesn’t care about the quality, it reflects only the version which is more successful.
Before you send out the testing versions, it’s important to decide what you’ll be testing and would be testing by parts or by the whole. Also, you need to set up your own criteria for success and that would be done by conversion rates.
Of Course, user’s goal with the initial A/B test is to get more people to check that version so you get a more accurate look at the results. If you don’t see improvements with the first set of A/B tests, you might want to try with the other versions with another test.
It’s either way, but at the end, you get the analytics in the form of results of what is to be asked and what should be done on your website so as to entertain the visitors. Your basic aim is to get as many visitors as possible and that can only be done.