You know the parable of the plumber?
The short version is this:
John’s basement was ankle-deep in water.
So he called the plumber.
The plumber surveyed the problem for a long moment, stroking his chin; then at last, he nodded.
He pulled a wrench from his back pocket, waded through the water, then reached up and tapped the wrench against a pipe.
Instantly, the water stopped flowing and in only a few heartbeats the worst of the flood cleared away.
"How much do I owe you?" John asked.
"Two hundred and seventy-five dollars," he said.
Smith was appalled. "For tapping a pipe with a wrench?"
The plumber, with a long-suffering look of patience, said, "No, sir. For tapping a pipe with a wrench, only five dollars." "Two hundred and seventy dollars, that's for knowing where to tap."
A/B testing is a lot like broken water pipes.
There is a leak or something to optimize, you just have to know where to look.
Much like John, lotsa folks think that a fix requires a lot of time, effort, and energy.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Let me explain…
Most A/B test for the sake of testing, or to be doing 'something'.
Chances are you’ve made this mistake too.
It usually goes like this:
Something has to be done, this is something, we’ll do this.
But in most cases, nothing productive is being tested.
For example:
Testing subject lines on email campaigns is quite common...
One subject line will have more opens than the other.
How do you replicate that control (previous winner) on the next campaign when the underlying context of the next campaign is different than the one that was tested previously?
You can't replicate the test.
That's why A/B testing in campaigns is dumb.
Send times is another example of a test that is meaningless for most companies sending emails.
Let me ask you...
Do you really think that you can influence when someone opens their Gmail app?
Maybe if you're Nike or something, a brand with foam-at-the-mouth customers.
Except 99% of companies aren't Nike.
Most of us are hawking commoditized products, info, or services.
On top of that your list is too small...
and doesn't have enough consistent sending activity to do send time testing.
Let me be verrry clear...
I'm not saying A/B testing is bad, or you shouldn't do it.
There is a time and a place.
And you sure as shit better know what you're testing and have clear constraints.
Here is a much more straightforward and higher-leverage A/B test:
Your email automations...
For one main reason: they are evergreen, so it's easy to assess whether a test was a success or failure.
Let me show you a real world example:
This here is a Welcome Automation.
There are a few things wrong with this flow as it is, and quite a few things that can be improved to drive more sales with relative ease.
But for this test, we wanted to keep it as simple and quick as possible.
The hypothesis: Do we drive more sales if we simply shorten the delay between emails?
We'll leave other improvements to this flow for another day.
After only 7 days the results were pretty astounding:
50% more clicks 🎉
38% more revenue 🎉🎉
This test won out quickly and the results are clear as day.
And it only took 2 minutes to make the changes.
Do you see how much simpler it is to run a test like this in a controlled environment rather than with campaigns that are different from one to the next?
There are hidden in plain sight stuff like this hiding in your business right now.
You just gotta know where to look.
To cashflow,
PR
Need email marketing help?
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Client Example:
When we started working with this client email accounted for a measly 13% of total sales. We built the strategy, did the copywriting, design, and execution and 3.5X'd the results. Reach out to see if we can create a similar graph for you. 🚀🚀🚀
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