MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

Brad Bortone recently wrote a blog post regarding one of the surprising findings from the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report – that 61% of marketers do not routinely test email campaigns to optimize performance.

Yes, as a member of the MECLABS team, a place where woven into the fabric of the corporate culture is testing and optimization, the news is disappointing. However, I can’t say it is surprising. Marketers today have more responsibilities and less time to accomplish their objectives, making it easy to overlook the benefits of testing.
Read more…

I recently attended the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing LEAPS Advanced Practices Workshop in Boston and, though these events are always good for new information, I found myself surprised – and even outright alarmed – by one particular statistic cited at the beginning of the event: 61% of companies do not routinely test their email campaigns.

Sixty-one percent. See for yourself:
Read more…

“She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name.” – Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)

Sometimes, as marketers, this is one of our biggest challenges. We must make sense of the “wild enchantment” inherent in our audience so we can call each offering we have by its right name. After all, the way we think about our products can be vastly different from the way our audience thinks about them. This is why specific words matter, and for more than just SEO.

Let’s take a look at a recent test conducted by MarketingSherpa (sister company to MarketingExperiments), to determine which words best tap into the audience’s motivations. Read more…

We usually share tests on this blog that our optimization research analysts conduct in our labs with our Research Partners. Sometimes we share tests from our audience is well, but rarely do we share our own tests.

In today’s blog post I wanted to share a recent email test from our own marketing team. Not because the results were impressive. If you’ve followed MarketingExperiments for any time, you’ve certainly seen us share results from 162% lifts and 59% gains. Today, we’re going to discuss what to do when you get something entirely different. Read more…

Often, marketers confuse the purpose of an email message with that of a landing page. Our research shows that selling your product twice – in an email and then the landing page – disrupts the reader’s thought sequence and could possibly hinder conversion.

By focusing an email on a single goal — such as inviting recipients to an event or location — you can see whether there are distracting elements driving recipients away from the desired action.

Many marketers lose connection with their audience by overstating value, or simply burying it in a wash of information and unnecessary language. Though all correspondence should state value before a call-to-action, it’s important to remember the goal of an email – a clickthrough – and use the copy as the catalyst for further discussion, rather than as an impromptu landing page. Read more…

Before I get started, please allow me to reiterate something we’ve expressed around here for years: The objective of an email is to get a click. However, while this goal seems clear, your prospective customers aren’t looking for a reason to click your email – they’re looking for a reason to delete it.

In order to capture the interest of someone navigating a cluttered inbox, your subject line message must be clear enough to garner attention and express value. The subject line is really just the first part of an ongoing conversation you’re trying to establish with a prospective customer. These conversations need to operate just as if they were happening in real life.

Think about it. When you begin an in-person conversation, you don’t speak in vague terms and hope someone is listening. Instead, you more than likely introduce your story with a quick, but valuable statement intended to get the audience’s attention, hoping they’ll focus on you and listen to the more elaborate details that follow.

If you succeed, not only do you get to tell your hilarious/heart-wrenching/life-altering story, but you also open the door for further relevant conversation. This practice also needs to be employed in email dialogue, as seen in the experiment below. Read more…