Archive for Testing
Market Your Holiday Offers
Great article from the Google Retail Blog regarding Holiday Marketing…check it out!
In recent years, shoppers have been conditioned to look for deals when shopping. We’ve asked consumers three years in a row about what promotions and offers they want for holiday, and it hasn’t changed much over time. Consumers are focused on sales, discounts and free shipping. And as consumers are more focused on immediate gratification rebates have decreased in importance.
Source: Google/Ipsos OTX Consumer Holiday Shopping Intentions Study, September 2010
This is reinforced by what we see people searching for. Searches for ‘printable coupons’ are currently up by 20% over last year, Searches for ‘bogo’ (short for ‘buy one get one free’) are currently up by 10% over last year.
Offering consumers some sort of value or discount is expected. Make sure to message your offers, free shipping and other value to your consumers through your advertising and your websites. Let the consumer know they are getting a good deal!
Posted by Heidi Spector, Google Retail Team
Are you an Email Marketing Skeptic?
Are you skeptical that email, as a marketing channel, can work for you? With anticipated postal rates, for commercial senders, to increase anywhere from 5% to 23%, what do you have to lose then to give email a try – But, we want you to be successful.
Here are a few tactics to consider when developing your email campaigns that will help turn email list rental into an extremely effective acquisition tool:
1. Don’t lead out of the gate with trying to sell: If you are a cataloger, for example, would you expect an email to work the same way as a multi-page, glossy catalog does? Of course not, use email to get people to raise their hand to receive your catalog. This “free” offering will be well-received by email recipients. But, wait, aren’t I still sending a catalog? Yes! But now, you are sending to a smaller, but self-selected group of hand-raisers. You’ll be more efficient with your direct mail spending.
2. Send a series of emails: Would you send one catalog and then, if a sale isn’t made, stop sending? No, of course not. Depending on the list you’ll send at least a few issues before you cut that name off the list. So why would you send one email and then quit? Instead, consider a series of emails to the same names. This could be aimed at getting them to sign up for the catalog (see #1), but could also include some selling. Since you’ve given yourself more time, you can try getting prospects to make a small purchase, to get them hooked. Of course, you want to use incentives (free shipping, discounts, and so forth) the same way you do with catalog prospecting.
3. Test, test, test and test some more!: Testing is a crucial aspect of marketing. Without it, you’re never quite sure what caused a campaign to succeed or fail, where to spend your money, how to avoid repeating mistakes, or how to optimize your campaigns for best results. Email is a highly measureable marketing channel and a medium can be extremely effective if you apply the same rigor that you do to your direct mail efforts. Test your subject line, offer, creative, landing page and lists. When you hit on a winning formula, keep using it, but then test some more to optimize.
These are just three ideas to help you start thinking about how email can help your acquisition efforts so you don’t spend your precious marketing budget on high postal rates.
Why do so many email marketers not bother to test their offers?
One of the challenges Email Marketing Companies struggle with is getting their clients to take the time to test their email campaigns. Marketers think, “Email is so inexpensive, why bother testing?” Email marketers all too frequently ignore years of direct marketing lessons. They won’t or can’t or don’t test aspects of their messages. Without testing, email can become very expensive when; its irrelevance drives customers away, or recipients delete your message at first glance or when response rates are next to nothing, or when there is a high volume of spam complaints that affects your sender reputation and can wide up being blacklisted.
So, Marketers, treat email as you have done in the past with offline marketing channels and test. Here are three helpful tips to consider as part of your testing plan:
1. Maintain a control message. To really understand if a change to an email actually affects response rates, it must be compared to a control group. Testing email is so easy that inexperienced marketers are tempted to test multiple facets of a message at once. Don’t. Stick to altering one part of the message, and then compare it to the email with the best response so far. Testing more than one facet is unnecessarily complicated.
2. Test significant differences. Ensure what you’re testing differs significantly from the control group. For example, rather than slightly rewording your offer, try one hard sell and one soft sell. Or send one message with a discount and one without. Over time, alter the size of the discount.
3. Test formatting. How many of you receive emails, that when viewed, the formatting was all messed up. Consumers receive a significant number of poorly formatted HTML messages because the sender didn’t test how it rendered in the different ISP’s email readers. Most likely your Email Service Provider (ESP) will have the capability to test to see what your email will look like across all major readers, both in preview mode and after the messages have been opened. They can find out if any of the content is likely to trigger spam filters, and if there are dead links and html errors. They will follow up with a report that gives advice about fixing any problems found. Correcting any potential viewing or delivery problems before you hit “send” will help to ensure your campaign will be viewed the way it is intended to be.
So why not turn testing into profits? Test as many different methods as possible, discover the most effective method, and crank up the volume on your best method. When you get into serious volumes and your results are doing very well, make a minor change – sometimes just a minor difference can result in a major impact on the amount of revenue you generate.
Email Campaign Reporting
Most email campaign reporting application report on number of emails delivered opens and click. Although helpful, this information is not sufficient to determine the real success of the campaign. For instance, what happens if the visitor didn’t convert online but viewed the contact page instead? What if they viewed 3 product pages and intended to come back later to purchase? How many clicked on a link to visit the site and then left immediately?
To truly measure the performance of an email campaign it is important to be able to track behaviors once the consumer clicks onto the brands website pages. To do so you will need to tag each of the links in your email so that you can track the clicks from the email.
By examining the results in your web analytics application and not just in your email program you can learn a lot more about what people did after they clicked through to your website. You can look at the content that they viewed, how long they stayed on the site, where they left and actions that they took whilst they were there.
This information is invaluable in estimating the actual value of the email campaign beyond immediate conversions and can assist you to develop future campaigns. It is also a great way to segment your list based on behaviors so to be highly targeted.
Most website analytics tools provide a simple tag/code that is tied to each link included in the email creative. An example is Google Analytics. The cost to do so is very minimal.
Email "Fliers" and what it means to email marketers
We received a great email from Media Post’s regarding what email behavior means to email marketers. We thought posting the definition of “Fliers” is relevant to our clients and audience.
FLIERS: These are people who review the email in their inbox and file it away for later use. I’ve heard consumer panels talk about how they file away email and offers from marketers until a time they are actually ready to do business with the marketer, then will revisit that folder to find an offer applicable to the transaction they are looking to perform.
This means a number of things to marketers. First, it makes it even more difficult to attribute revenue to a specific email message — and near-impossible to determine incremental revenue, as the recipient is referring back to past messages after making a decision to purchase, versus taking an incremental behavior because of the email. This behavior also can dramatically sway your open and click-through tracking, since the recipient isn’t actually engaging with the email when it’s received, but when it’s most relevant or necessary to the recipient.
For more information on email marketing, click HERE.
Quick Tip: Email Testing
The Importance of Testing Email Campaigns
The power of email marketing is that there are so many variables your can test and gain intelligence from that can impact your campaigns, and ultimately increase revenue. Testing is interrelated with segmentation. If you segment your list into smaller groups using some criteria like; age, income, geography, testing is the only way to know what each group is looking for. Once you identify what they want, you can send them more relevant information, keeping your responses high and complaints low. We encourage anyone involved in email marketing to test and optimize frequently, small changes can make a big impact in your campaigns.
For more information on email testing, check out V12 Group’s Email Marketing page.
Single Variable Testing Vs. Multivariate Testing
There are two ways to test emails: testing one variable at a time and testing multiple variables at a time. A single variable test is commonly referred as A/B split testing. A/B testing implies sending several copies of an email differing by a single variable only to a control group to see which copy gets a higher response from the recipients.
The advantages of A/B testing are is that it is quick and easy. You can set up and an A/B test in a sot period of time and analyze results quick. Also, since you are testing only one variable at a time, you can clearly understand which version drives the highest response.
When using single variable testing, you can constantly optimize your email marketing, with each and every campaign. For example, you can test:
• Which of two subject lines gets more opens? Will the word ‘Free’ help, or hurt?
• What ‘From’ name will people respond to most? Will they open if they see your company name, or do they prefer personal names from sales reps they know?
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing is like running many A/B tests concurrently, where there are multiple elements being tested at the same time. For example, you would test two alternate product images, plus two alternate subject lines, plus two alternate product text. Multivariate testing is that it not only shows you which combination of elements generate more open rates or click throughs or pull more leads but also reveals which individual elements influence visitor behavioral vs. those that do not.
The advantages of multivariate testing are that you can learn effects of variables on one another, for example, which subject lines works with a specific call to action. Additionally, you can run several variables at one time to find the best combination.
Check out more informaion on email marketing and email marketing testing on V12 Group’s website. Click HERE
Email Element Testing: Subject Lines
This is the most popular test where you can better determine a compelling and relevant subject line. The primary measure of success here is open rate because the subject line usually determines whether the email gets opened or not. A common tactic is to test the email with and without personalization. Further testing can include email versions with and without the company’s name, the email receiver’s name, or the product’s name in the subject line.
MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Best Practices Report identified that users place significant value on discounts and subject lines that emphasize money saving offers. Incorporating these into your subject line testing are crucial for email marketing success. The graph below shows a breakout of the top 9 subject line themes and the rate at which respondents opened the email.
Email Marketing Testing: Testing…Testing…1…2.
Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports often collates valuable information that we might otherwise miss. Most recently, he reported on the successful test results achieved by various email campaign tweaks. If you need some inspiration for your own efforts, consider findings like these:
• Adding an extra link within the teaser text improved clickthroughs on average 25.8% to an online article for one B2B content publisher.
• Groupon added an unsubscribe link at the top of its email message. Result: Spam complaints dropped 30%.
• An investment newsletter publisher tested “Send My Free Report” versus “Start My Free Subscription” on the signup button. The latter wording decreased conversions 22.9%.
Brownlow cautions, though, that your results may well vary from the ones he presents. That’s because:
• Every situation is unique. “That’s why we test in the first place,” he says, “because we can never be quite sure how our audience responds to one or another email change.”
• Results are not sacrosanct. The numbers you see today might not be the results you see next month or next year; testing is an ongoing process.
• Success might not be obvious. “One subject line alternative might have the lowest open and click rates,” he explains, “but produce the highest volume of sales.”
For more info on email testing and this article, check out email-marketing-reports.com
MarketingSherpa's 7 Takeaways to Improve your Email Marketing in 2010
Takeaway #1. So-called email killers aren’t that deadly
One of the most significant themes of the event was the symbiotic — not antagonistic — relationship between email and social media (more on this below).
Takeaway #3. Customer service is the new differentiator
Customer retention should be the new focus of marketing, and that satisfying customers, rewarding them for their loyalty, and empowering them to share their positive brand experience will help companies grow.
Takeaway #4. Think value, not just relevance
Just because something is relevant, it’s not necessarily going to inspire us to act.
Takeaway #5. Test assumptions and best practices
Look at each of your email messages and ask yourself:
What am I asking the recipient to do? Why should they do it?
What is my objective? What is the best way to achieve it?
Takeaway #6. Promote your opt-in offer like a product
Market your email newsletters and alerts as a product with valueP and promote your email programs on all your social sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…).
Takeaway #7. Better engagement will help deliverability
The industry is moving beyond reputation and authentication and toward the sum total of all positive and negative impressions of your company based on email practices.
So while a subscriber hitting the spam button will still work against you, the improvements in opens, clicks and other engagement metrics that you achieve through testing, optimization, social integration and the like will help outweigh the occasional disgruntled recipient.
MarketingSherpa: Summit Wrap-Up Report: 7 Takeaways to Improve your Email Marketing in 2010.
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posted in: Creative | Design | Email Marketing | Marketing Sherpa | Relevance | Testing