The importance of A/B testing for Marketing
Digital Marketers have heard the word A/B Testing everywhere for the last few years. It isn’t a new or trending term anymore, yet it is still not being used to its full potential.
What exactly is A/B testing?
A/B Testing is delivering two different versions of something to the same audience and seeing which one gets better results. So, for example, if you test two different email headlines for the same mailer, you can see which mail was opened more and derive that result from the headline that worked better for that particular audience.
In technical terms, it “is the comparison of two components with a single variation in a digital campaign to improve conversion rates. A portion of your test base will receive one variation, the other portion will receive another. The winning result will then be used for the full campaign base.”
But the problem with A/B testing is that you can’t just do one test and think, “Great, we’ve got it!”. It comes with multiple tests and reiterations of testing to mold and shapes the personalised marketing messaging that will actually help marketing campaigns.
If done correctly, A/B testing has some fruitful benefits:
- Increased conversion rates – A/B Testing is the most used testing method for improving conversions and can increase it by 300%.
- Increased revenue – due to increased conversions.
- Significant lead generation – mostly seen when testing landing pages.
- Happy CMOs (this is just an extra side effect – who doesn’t love having a well-oiled team with a happy manager)
What can you A/B test?
Pretty much anything digital with a message. Some people even joke and say that A/B testing stands for ‘Always Be Testing’, which isn’t true, but we SHOULD always be testing! These are the main items that should be tested and will give you the most value:
1. Emails:
- Subject lines: try using your company’s name or making the headline more action-oriented.
- Time of day or day of the week: This is probably the one we are most used to. (Did you even know you were A/B testing?)
- Design of the mail: different layouts or banner images can be tested.
- Call to actions: Do some people react to whitepaper downloads or maybe try different colour buttons?
One of the most famous tests is the study by Joshua Porter (The Button Color A/B Test: Red Beats Green). One test showed that a red CTA button outperformed a green one by 21 percent based on 2,000 page–visits.
2. Landing pages
- Colours: Background colours, link colours, and call to actions can all be tested.
- Layout: Maybe try a smaller banner or place your forms on the right-hand side instead of at the bottom.
- Images: images or no images – which one works best?
- Content: your audience might prefer blogs, articles, white papers, webinars or a variety of others – test them.
- Testimonials: Test some pages with testimonials to see if they have an impact on your audience.
- Promotional offers: Offers can be personalised and tested.
3. Social media
- Posts: Play with different kinds of posts, shorter ones, longer ones, use emojis, bullet it, play with the content and voice that is used.
- Images: This is an important one. Is your “look and feel” getting tired? Try different images, characters. Maybe move to animation if you’ve been using stock images. Are gifs maybe more effective?
- CTAs: Are your CTA’s quite direct? Maybe it can be more playful or conversational?
Why Should You A/B Test?
A/B testing should have an objective. If your organisation is dealing with a high rate of unqualified leads or low viewer engagement, it might be a good idea to figure out why, which can be done through testing. These are just some of the reasons you may need to try it out:
1.Get more out of your website traffic
The cost of getting high quality traffic is high and it would be a pity to get the people there and then lose them based on elements of your website that don’t speak to them. A/B Testing lets you make the most of your current traffic, even if it’s minor changes and testing, and it can significantly increase your conversions.
2. Proven significant improvements
Doing things based on gut feel or deductions sometimes only gets you so far. A/B testing has a winning element and a losing element, which statistically gives you better outcomes.
3. Low-risk changes
Making small changes to mailer and web pages and testing them gives you direction. Instead of just redesigning an entire website or mail template, test the smaller elements until you have knowledge of exactly what your audience wants to see. With A/B testing, you can test multiple variations of an element of your website till you find the best possible version.
These are just a few things you can test. It is important to add this to your marketing strategy as it might change the way you are currently marketing.
Marketing Automation gives you the tools you need to easily A/B test your marketing materials. We use A/B testing on every single one of our mailers and it is carving a more thought–out direction for our content and customer.
If you would like to find out more, fill in the form and we will contact you.
The importance of A/B testing for Marketing
Digital Marketers have heard the word A/B Testing everywhere for the last few years. It isn’t a new or trending term anymore, yet it is still not being used to its full potential.
What exactly is A/B testing?
A/B Testing is delivering two different versions of something to the same audience and seeing which one gets better results. So, for example, if you test two different email headlines for the same mailer, you can see which mail was opened more and derive that result from the headline that worked better for that particular audience.
In technical terms, it “is the comparison of two components with a single variation in a digital campaign to improve conversion rates. A portion of your test base will receive one variation, the other portion will receive another. The winning result will then be used for the full campaign base.”
But the problem with A/B testing is that you can’t just do one test and think, “Great, we’ve got it!”. It comes with multiple tests and reiterations of testing to mold and shapes the personalised marketing messaging that will actually help marketing campaigns.
If done correctly, A/B testing has some fruitful benefits:
- Increased conversion rates – A/B Testing is the most used testing method for improving conversions and can increase it by 300%.
- Increased revenue – due to increased conversions.
- Significant lead generation – mostly seen when testing landing pages.
- Happy CMOs (this is just an extra side effect – who doesn’t love having a well-oiled team with a happy manager)
What can you A/B test?
Pretty much anything digital with a message. Some people even joke and say that A/B testing stands for ‘Always Be Testing’, which isn’t true, but we SHOULD always be testing! These are the main items that should be tested and will give you the most value:
1. Emails:
- Subject lines: try using your company’s name or making the headline more action-oriented.
- Time of day or day of the week: This is probably the one we are most used to. (Did you even know you were A/B testing?)
- Design of the mail: different layouts or banner images can be tested.
- Call to actions: Do some people react to whitepaper downloads or maybe try different colour buttons?
One of the most famous tests is the study by Joshua Porter (The Button Color A/B Test: Red Beats Green). One test showed that a red CTA button outperformed a green one by 21 percent based on 2,000 page–visits.
2. Landing pages
- Colours: Background colours, link colours, and call to actions can all be tested.
- Layout: Maybe try a smaller banner or place your forms on the right-hand side instead of at the bottom.
- Images: images or no images – which one works best?
- Content: your audience might prefer blogs, articles, white papers, webinars or a variety of others – test them.
- Testimonials: Test some pages with testimonials to see if they have an impact on your audience.
- Promotional offers: Offers can be personalised and tested.
3. Social media
- Posts: Play with different kinds of posts, shorter ones, longer ones, use emojis, bullet it, play with the content and voice that is used.
- Images: This is an important one. Is your “look and feel” getting tired? Try different images, characters. Maybe move to animation if you’ve been using stock images. Are gifs maybe more effective?
- CTAs: Are your CTA’s quite direct? Maybe it can be more playful or conversational?
Why Should You A/B Test?
A/B testing should have an objective. If your organisation is dealing with a high rate of unqualified leads or low viewer engagement, it might be a good idea to figure out why, which can be done through testing. These are just some of the reasons you may need to try it out:
1.Get more out of your website traffic
The cost of getting high quality traffic is high and it would be a pity to get the people there and then lose them based on elements of your website that don’t speak to them. A/B Testing lets you make the most of your current traffic, even if it’s minor changes and testing, and it can significantly increase your conversions.
2. Proven significant improvements
Doing things based on gut feel or deductions sometimes only gets you so far. A/B testing has a winning element and a losing element, which statistically gives you better outcomes.
3. Low-risk changes
Making small changes to mailer and web pages and testing them gives you direction. Instead of just redesigning an entire website or mail template, test the smaller elements until you have knowledge of exactly what your audience wants to see. With A/B testing, you can test multiple variations of an element of your website till you find the best possible version.
These are just a few things you can test. It is important to add this to your marketing strategy as it might change the way you are currently marketing.
Marketing Automation gives you the tools you need to easily A/B test your marketing materials. We use A/B testing on every single one of our mailers and it is carving a more thought–out direction for our content and customer.
If you would like to find out more, fill in the form and we will contact you.
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