Discover What Really Works in Optimization

MarketingExperiments is a research laboratory with a simple (but not easy) seven-word mission statement: To discover what really works in optimization. We focus all of our experimentation on optimizing marketing communications. To that end we test every conceivable approach and we publish the results (at no charge) in the MarketingExperiments Journal (subscribe).

There are three ways to use this site:

1. Self-Guided Learning: Access, for free, more than $10 million in primary marketing research and experiments via our web clinics, MarketingExperiments Journal and research directory.
2. Formal Training: Learn how to increase your marketing ROI through live events & workshops, online certification courses and live company training.
3. Research Partnership: Apply for a research partnership and let the MarketingExperiments team help drive conversions and ROI for your subscription, lead-generation, ecommerce, email and other online marketing efforts.

Blog

	February 10th, 2012 Email Summit: Testing timing and format elements in follow-up email Day three of Email Summit 2012 included a case study of GamersFirst from Frank Cartwright. The online gaming website worked through the challenge of getting more people through their sales funnel by testing extensively. See the results of two of their tests: text vs. graphic and email send times.
	February 8th, 2012 Email Summit 2012: Meeting email marketing challenges Kicking off Email Summit 2012, Sergio Balegno discusses email marketing challenges reported by marketers, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin perfectly illustrates the value of testing over just applying “best practices” concepts for email elements like subject lines.
	February 6th, 2012 Social Media Marketing: Going viral is so easy it’s hard What makes a message go viral? More importantly, how can you position your marketing messages to go viral? While no one we know can force virality, here are a few tips to help you at least prepare for the possibility.

See How Our Web Clinics Are Produced

Recent Research (presented on a Live Web Clinic)

( Watch, Listen)	Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions According to MarketingSherpa's 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report - PPC Edition, 56% of marketers claim achieving or increasing measurable ROI is their most frustrating challenge when it comes to paid search. In this Web clinic replay, you will learn how to get more ROI out of your PPC campaigns.
( Watch, Listen)	Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 58.1% lift with a radical redesign There are many guides to A/B split testing on the Internet. And most are adamant about making sure you test one thing at a time. If you don't, they warn you’ll never learn anything about what works and doesn't work on your pages.
( Watch, Listen)	How to Increase Conversion in 2012: The last 20,000 hours of marketing research distilled into 60 minutes This Web clinic replay takes the past year in online marketing research and condenses it into four tactics you can take away and apply to your marketing in 2012.
( Watch, Listen)	Email Messaging: How overcoming 3 common errors increased clickthrough 104% Most email messages, even semi-important ones without sales pitches, get deleted without even being read every day. What happens when your ideal prospect receives yours? Do they even stop to notice? Or do they file it away in the special destination reserved for every hype-laden, sales-driven message they receive — the crowded "Trash" folder?
( Read, Watch, Listen)	SEO Landing Pages: How we achieved 548% more conversions without damaging organic rankings Landing page optimization and search engine optimization are two completely different entities. While optimizing to convince a human to take an action – such as buy, or fill out a lead form – can clearly increase your conversions, what effect will it have on those computerized spiders that visit your site and determine your SERP ranking?
(Read, Watch, Listen)	Bad Data: The 3 validity threats that make your tests look conclusive (when they are deeply flawed) If you’ve tuned into past MarketingExperiments Web clinics, you’ve seen some pretty impressive gains: 141% increase in conversion 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce website $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth (in only eight months) And we’ve shared transferable principles to help you achieve similar gains yourself. But for this Web clinic, the MarketingExperiments team took a different approach and showed you not just what we did to get these types of results, but gave you an inside look at how we did it.
(Watch, Listen)	Banner Ad Design: The 3 key banner objectives that drove a 285% lift When executed correctly, banner ads can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your offers. Unfortunately, many marketers don't have the time and resources to devote to “correctly executing” banner ad campaigns. What they need is a formula for designing banner ads that produce results. In a recent test, our researchers found that by designing a banner ad to accomplish three key objectives, they were able to drive a 285% increase in conversion on the landing page.
(Watch, Listen)	Negative Lifts: How a 24% loss produced a 141% increase in conversion Testing and optimization can lead to impressive, triple-digit gains and far higher conversion rates for all the traffic you're spending time and money driving to your website. However, testing anything on your website can be a bit frightening to the average marketer. For instance, what happens when you don’t get a lift? Well, that's exactly what happened with a recent test we did for one of our research partners...
(Read, Watch, Listen)	Headline Optimization: How testing 10 headlines revealed a 3-letter word that improved conversion more than major changes One of the easiest elements to change on a page is the headline. It’s also one of the most important parts of the page to optimize if you’re trying to get a lift in your conversion rate. However, when tasked with writing an engaging headline for a marketing piece, many marketers get it wrong. In this Web clinic, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin speaks to this problem and shows how 6 real-world headlines (submitted by our viewers) could be changed for to increase customer response.
(Read, Watch, Listen)	Optimization Researched: Latest findings about effective LPO operational practices based on data from 2,673 marketers It’s one thing to talk about landing page optimization and another thing entirely to execute. That’s one of the key findings in Boris Grinkot’s new Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report. Drawing from his report, Boris and Daniel Burstein (Director of Editorial Content) walk marketers through the process of making the business case for optimization.
(Read, Watch, Listen)	Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire ecommerce Website So you’ve just increased the effectiveness of your online lead capture by XX% using optimization strategies you've recently learned… Now what? How do you ensure that this gain is not lost in the sales pipeline? How do you keep the online marketing efforts you invested in to get the lead from being squandered? Many marketers end their optimization efforts on the Web page, not realizing the significant revenue lost by not taking simple steps to optimize a lead before passing it off to Sales.

Affiliate Marketing Tests and tactics that increased clicks and leads by 165% How can affiliate marketing help you generate more traffic, leads and sales? What steps should merchants, affiliates and networks take to increase their ROI? Inspired by takeaways from Affiliate Summit and past MarketingExperiments affiliate clinics, we looked at ways that all involved can avoid or overcome common pitfalls and build more successful programs. During the August 26 clinic, Director of Channels Aaron Rosenthal and Senior Analyst Robert Reynard explored: Research on what is and isn't working today Tests and experiments with gains of up to 165% Do's and don'ts for merchants, networks and affiliates Read This Report ...