Our superheroes just gave you some great advice about A/B testing different things in your emails, but what about A/B testing to see what makes your audience open emails?
Subject line A/B testing is part-science and part-art, and over time, it will tell you what words, phrases, and formats are most likely to grab your audience’s attention. But how exactly do you perform these tests?
The marketing automation system is your oyster when it comes to everything from database hygiene to lead nurturing to my personal favorite… *drumroll please*… A/B (aka split) testing, or the process of comparing two versions to determine which version is the better performing one.
Perhaps you’re an experienced marketer already well-versed in the world of A/B tests and just need some inspo. Or maybe you’re an eager learner who wants to venture into testing emails and don’t know where to start. Either way, I hope you can benefit from these ideas that have helped me along the way:
In just a few weeks, your company will be hosting the world’s most exclusive conference, #Hoolicon2019, and you are responsible for the email campaign to promote it. You were already given the exact audience criteria, so you build your smart list accordingly, ensure your smart list produces the desired results, and prepare to add it to your Marketo send campaign.
What could go wrong?
How much time does your organization devote to content marketing?
Do you have a dedicated content professional on your staff, or is writing and publishing content something you try to get around to in your spare time?
Do you remember the last time you sent out an email to your subscribers?
What about the last time you posted on your blog?
Growing up, I had every intent on a career in science. I didn’t consider marketing or sales as a profession of choice and knew nothing about business. I admit, I am probably one of many who believed that marketing was only responsible for print material, the “pretty” brochures. Now, when I hear others define it as such, my heart slightly cringes. Fortunately, I learned early on in my career how marketing is defined across various channels and its role as part of a business strategy. As a digital marketer, it’s always fun for me to help explain to my peers what exactly is digital marketing and why it’s important.
Digital marketing is a way for companies to advertise their products and services through online channels, and it is only one of several channels that a marketing department is responsible for. Others include events, demand generation, social, distribution, partner, etc. Some of these channels could branch out to their own specific sub-channels and tactics, and digital marketing is a great example of this.
With all the time we spend on emails that render flawlessly across desktop and mobile, it’s unfortunate how often I tap on an email CTA and end up at a less-than-perfect landing page that either loads slowly or doesn’t display very well on my device.
With some industry verticals already having 50% of opens on tablet and mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re optimizing your landing pages and your landing page templates.
Here are a few tips from our Technology Solutions Services team to help you get the most out of your landing pages:
“Thought leadership” is one of those buzzwords that gets tossed around all the time. But unlike other buzzwords that are trendy one day and groan-worthy the next (I’m looking at you, “guru”, “blogosphere”, and “low-hanging fruit”), this one is actually vital to your marketing efforts.
As a thought leader, you’re a go-to authority in your industry. You’re the first person (or company) that everyone thinks of. You’re the one that everyone looks to when there’s a new industry development. In other words, you’re the top dog.
So, how do you actually establish thought leadership?
How long should marketers and salespeople wait for the technology that enables them?
For example, what if you were trying to send an email but it didn’t send right away? How long would you wait before you had to abort an email launch? What if you were trying to push data to Salesforce from another system but it took more than one business day? Marketing and sales users obviously find these situations frustrating, and enough system delays can silently wreak havoc on your business.
As a senior business partner at Marvel Marketers, I’ve spent much of my time helping larger clients improve their systems, especially when it comes to delayed business processes. I’ve seen synchronization delays lasting longer than a week between marketing automation systems (like Marketo) with CRMs (like Salesforce). I’ve also seen a Marketo instance with so many workflows firing at once that the initial backlog resulted in multiple delayed email launches and other key data changes that took more than 3 full business days to resolve.
Really, it’s okay to manage your manager!
I don’t mean to micro-manage your manager by walking to their office, demanding answers, and giving them tasks. You’d have to have one heck of a professional working dynamic to pull that one off.
Instead, my definition of “managing your manager” is to reach a point where the communication between you and your manager becomes bi-directional, and you feel empowered to provide valuable input and drive conversations. As a senior level marketer, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have come across strong and passionate leaders that encourage this type of interaction, and who provide their team opportunities to grow their skills.
Whether they’re product demo videos, videos that welcome people to your website, or video newsletters that nurture leads, video marketing is one of the best tools in a marketer’s arsenal.
However, with so much competition in today’s landscape, you can’t post a video or two and call it a day. One-offs will not lead to success. Instead, you need a bonafide video marketing strategy.
Here’s a three-step plan for creating one:
 |
 |
 |
