3 Steps to Effective Testing

Are Your Marketing Campaigns Passing the Test?

Click-through rates are declining, and marketers everywhere are searching for a way to increase their engagement. That makes an effective testing strategy more important than ever; it’s the key to enhancing your campaigns and boosting engagement.

However, testing often falls to the bottom of the to-do list. Marketers know it’s important, but it doesn’t seem as urgent as getting that next campaign out the door. But as testing is foundational to improving marketing messaging, marketers need an efficient yet effective strategy that can be implemented for every campaign.

These three tips are here to help you do just that. Once you add these to your campaign planning, you’ll be well on your way to driving the best results possible from your campaigns.

Step 1: Understand the Goal

Every marketer wants to see an uptick in performance when testing their campaigns, but setting specific goals and guidelines is what will enable you to take your campaign performance to the next level:

• Decide which metrics you’re looking to address. Whether it’s click-through rates, conversion rates, revenue, or another high-value action, it’s key to narrow down which metrics you’re looking to boost. Once you’ve chosen the most critical metric, make sure that all other key stakeholders are on board with the primary KPI.
• Connect your test to overarching business targets. More clicks are always great, but to get stakeholders on board and contribute to your annual KPIs, every test should be supporting your business’s overall goals.
• Match your personalization tactics to your goals. Ensure that the features you want to test within your campaign correlate with your chosen KPI. For example, if you add a countdown timer to an email when you’re looking to grow a long-term KPI such as customer lifetime value (CLTV), it will be challenging to prove the value of your addition. 

Once these tasks are complete, it’s time to get back to science class and set a hypothesis for your test. Usually, this takes the classic “if-then-because” structure, as demonstrated in the two examples below:

If you add a behavioral banner at the top of your emails, then you will drive incremental performance in total conversions because you delivered a customer-centric reminder. 

If you add a countdown timer to your batch emails, then you will drive incremental performance in total clicks because you created a sense of urgency.

Once you’ve set up your own hypothesis with this structure, it’s time to turn to the next step.

Step 2: Establish a Testing Framework

With your hypothesis in mind, it’s time to consider how you’re going to perform your test. The first question is how you’ll divide your audience: are you going to send your test campaign to 50% of your audience or 10%? Whatever split you choose, ensure that you’re sending your campaign to a randomized group that’s large enough to have statistical significance. 

From there, it’s time to set up your test. A/B testing within your ESP is a tried-and-true tactic, but marketers can benefit from implementing multiple types of tests within their strategy. Consider using Movable Ink’s Optimizer as a testing tool. With it, marketers can easily test different image variations within a single email module and split the receiving audience. This tactic helps uncover which images from your creative library spark the most engagement.

Whatever the type of test, you’ll also need to determine the volume, frequency, and segmentation, as well as deciding the placement and messaging of your test element. Additionally, don’t forget to build dates into your calendar for campaign iteration and reporting—the last step of your testing strategy.

Step 3: Record the Results

Once the test has been deployed, it’s time to analyze the insights. Don’t be discouraged if your test didn’t show an uptick in metrics. Each test is an opportunity to apply new insights, even if the learning reveals what not to do moving forward. If the results are inconclusive, that time spent is not wasted, either; this is simply a lesson in how to set up your testing framework for the future. 

When actionable results do arrive, it’s time to set a consistent reporting window for every test. In that window, data needs to be reported and compared to the initial hypothesis. Share those results out and ensure that everyone on your team is aligned with the analysis and the creation of your next hypothesis. 

Your results should drive the recommendations for your next round of testing and also contribute to the broader marketing strategy. Taking action quickly will maximize the impact of your testing strategy.

Origins’ Campaign Passed Testing Practices With Flying Colors

While there are many guidelines to keep in mind when testing, the results are well worth the effort. Just take Origins’ extremely successful A/B test as an example.

Origins deployed a promotion featuring their limited time offer of a free 5-piece set with purchase. For this email, the marketing team ran a creative test to see which CTA would boost engagement with their audience: text only, or both images and text.

When testing the two banners, Origins saw a 57% increase in click-through rate using the banner with an image. This not only provided valuable insights to maximize the success of this campaign, but also offered results they could apply when brainstorming future ones. 

Ready, Test, Go!

With these strategies in mind, you’ll be able to enhance your testing practices to drive greater success than ever.

For more tactical tips to up your marketing game, explore the related resources below. For a behind-the-scenes look at the personalization engine that powered Origins’ campaign—and many more—book your turn to see Movable Ink in action.