During March Madness, it seems like anything can happen. A number one seed can take the whole tournament or be upset by a low-ranking underdog. You can predict, with your bracket, how you think it’ll turn out, but only the lucky few will have intact brackets by the Final Four. Maybe you pick based on season-long data and NBA prospects. Or maybe you pick based on school colors and mascots.
With as much time as you might spend developing the perfect March Madness bracket, do you spend that much time on your “marketing bracket”? (That’s not really a thing, but go with me here.) There’s a marketing term called split testing (or A/B testing) and it’s very similar to the scientific method or NCAA brackets: make predictions based on past data, see how it turns out, and apply what you’ve learned next time.
For example, when sending out a monthly email newsletter, maybe you’ve sent out the same format for about a year and are seeing open and click rates are slowing declining. To see if you can increase those rates, you decide to pick one aspect of the email to change: the subject line. Keeping everything the same, you decide to put two subject lines against each other, the one you’ve been using (“March Newsletter”) and a new one you think might do better (“10 Business Slam Dunks”).
Separate your mailing list into two randomly selected lists, send one email to one group and the other email to the other group and compare the rates after a substantial amount of time. The larger the sample size, the more statistically relevant the test. Once you see which subject line has performed the best, keep that one and keep comparing it to new and improved subject lines or move on to testing another aspect. Keep in mind to only change one aspect at a time, or you won’t be able to tell which aspect made the impact.
You can test to optimize just about any aspect of a website, email, or landing page: button color, button size, layout, form length, written content, the list goes on and on. Test everything. Build on top of your findings and continue to find the best combination for the best results. Just like basketball, the best team will rise to victory, maybe even the least likely option. So keep testing to get better results and grow the strongest “marketing team” possible.
To learn more about what you need to make a great email, download our free Email Best Practices ebook.
{{cta(‘abe41b9d-e7ba-4cd9-b83c-ca9fdcdd08d5’)}}