Learning to embrace failure

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are trained to be risk adverse when possible, whether they are designing new products or opening a new location. However, when it comes to marketing, this mindset can actually be counterproductive – often times, true success can only be had after failure.

As ClickZ notes, failure is frequently a part of testing in marketing. Sure, it’s possible to launch a marketing campaign that will perform well on its first run. However, to maximize success, businesses need to try different approaches. Sometimes these different strategies will improve results, or they could have the opposite effect.

“Failure is an element of testing; even simple A/B tests are predicated on the notion that one part will outperform (succeed) the other part, which is a degree of failure,” the news source explains.

For example, with email marketing, A/B testing is commonly used to determine which headlines and body copy are the most effective for generating clicks and sales. One headline or sales letter will be sent to half the subscriber list, while a separate one is mailed to the other half. Whichever email performs better is the template that should be used for future communications.

Running successful A/B tests

As the media outlet asserts, A/B testing isn’t just a blind process where random variables are changed and experimented with. Rather, A/B testing should be a controlled procedure that enables business owners to quickly determine which approaches work and which don’t so they can get on the right path quickly and efficiently.

The most important thing to remember is to only test one element at any given moment. For example, business owners could experiment with either a new email headline or offer, but it’s recommended they don’t try both at the same time. This will help illustrate specifically which changes are improving response.

Timing is also crucial. “Expose customers to tests at the same time. In order to reduce the number of variables, execute tests on the same day, in the same mail stream,” ClickZ explains. “This will account for any day-of-week response fluctuations. Alternatively, you will likely want to test day-of-week performance, but as with the aforementioned note, you shouldn’t also be testing subject line length.”

Ensuring measurability is another important element of testing. Businesses need to make sure their test groups are big enough that they are gathering meaningful data. If companies run a split testing effort but only send emails to 10 total subscribers, then their results may not be wholly representative of larger consumers bases. ClickZ suggests targeting a minimum of 100 subscribers when split testing.

Businesses also need a control group to test results against. It’s impossible to determine whether response rates are improving or declining if companies don’t have solid data to begin with.

The pitfalls of split testing

While A/B testing can help businesses maximize their email marketing efforts (as well as another advertising approach), it has a number of pitfalls as well.

Split testing can be a huge time sink. It can take a while to determine which elements are worth testing, and employing a variety of changes will take multiple emails to effectively evaluate. This means that small businesses will spend a considerable amount of time before they are maximizing the potential of their email marketing efforts

Successful A/B testing also relies upon the business’ ability to measure the results of its email marketing campaigns. Without accurate measurements, entrepreneurs will be hard pressed to implement meaningful changes.

Have you ever used split testing to improve your email marketing campaigns? What were some aspects of your efforts that email testing encouraged you to expand upon?

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