HOME PAGE HEADLINE

Home Page Headline and Sub-Headline A/B Test

Here, we see a test that focuses on the headline and sub-headline on California Closets’ home page. With its catchier headline and its straightforward sub-headline, you probably are thinking that Version B won this test. But, you’d be wrong! Version A increased leads by an astounding 115%! Why? The copy on Version A was actually tied to the brand’s PPC ads that drive people to the page. The key take-away here? All components of your marketing and sales experience work together, so it’s important to keep this in mind when developing each one.

Ask yourself: Does this component coordinate well with this other component? Keep this is mind when performing A/B tests on elements that are indirectly connected to one another.

EMAIL SENDER NAME

Which type of approach do your customers prefer in your email communications? In this example, the sender name of an email was tested: the control showed “Marketo Premium Content” as the sender and the test (i.e. variant) showed “Ryan Hammer” as the sender. The success metric was the number of opens. The hypothesis was that the generic name would win since customers and potential customers know the name “Marketo”, but they are probably not familiar with the name “Ryan Hammer”, meaning they would be more inclined to ignore (or even automatically delete) an email from a perceived stranger. But the hypothesis was wrong! The email from Ryan Hammer generated more opens. The conclusion is that customers saw those emails as more personal and warm, rather than being the result of a mass email blast.

The take-away here is that even when we think our hypotheses are correct, there’s always a chance we are wrong— emphasizing the importance of testing. We wouldn’t want to be sending only “Marketo Premium Content” emails totally unaware that they are not optimized!

EMAIL SUBJECT LINE

Does the exact wording of a subject line of an email really matter? Yes, yes it does! Here is a face-off between “How to Measure the ROI of Your Social Marketing” and “Do You Measure the ROI of Your Social Marketing?” The success metric with testing email subject lines is open rate and click rate.

The hypothesis was that Version A’s subject line would perform much better because it is worded in an actionable way for marketing practitioners, the target audience. But the hypothesis was wrong! The more direct subject line, that of Version B, took the cake. Here, we learn that a subject line that leverages human psychology and instills fear works to get more opens and clicks than a subject line that simply encourages education. It’s interesting to see how your customers’ brains work, to say the least!

MOBILE

With such a small screen to work with on mobile devices, marketers must identify the best way to lay out their content to attract customers. ApartmentGuide set out to determine whether using a new format on its mobile site would generate more prospects. Specifically, they wanted to see whether placing sponsored search results on a certain mobile page would generate more conversions and more revenue. The success metric was the number of clicks. ApartmentGuide theorized that the number of clicks would decrease, but they were wrong! The number of clicks went up by 1.6%. The take-away here is that even just a small tweak to your site can produce a lift in conversions.

DIGITAL AD COPY

Here is a digital advertisement test that took place on Facebook. AdEspresso set out to increase the number of “likes” on its Facebook page. In this pursuit, the company A/B tested both versions of this ad. The number of “likes” is the success metric. The headline and image remained the same; only the copy differed. You’ll see that Version B changes the word “pro” to “daily” and also adds the line “increase your ROI!” You would think that the notion of increasing ROI would be enticing to potential customers. But surprisingly, Version A ended up winning this showdown. Within a few days, it had acquired over 70 new likes while Version B had acquired zero! Here we see the power of changing copy on digital ads—even if the change is perceivably small.