Lauren Ackerman, Web Content Specialist
Sorry for the clickbait title. I see it all over the web, so I assumed it must get an AMAZING response, and I wanted to test it.
Now you deserve a payoff, so I’ll share with you the most interesting test I helped conduct this year, in which we tested some catalog creative for a client.
We typically recommend starting with extensive cover testing, but in this case we were working with a short time frame and did a side-by-side creative test at the client’s request. We reorganized the book to make it easier to shop, applied some hygiene best practices and reworked covers to include best-selling products, or new items that were projected to be best-sellers based on similarity to previous seasons’ winners. We carved out a test segment, a control segment and dropped it in the mail, confident that the test version would boost response.
The result? The test version bombed with current customers. It was perplexing because we applied catalog best practices that we’d seen work time and time again.
Well, it turns out that different audiences sometimes respond in wildly different ways to the same creative. The test version did quite well with prospects, which indicated that there was a growth opportunity – just not in the place that we predicted.
In this particular case, the customer file (who was on the older side) did not like change. Or maybe they enjoyed the treasure hunt of perusing the catalog with less clearly defined product categories.
But it was a reminder of WHY testing is so critical. Nothing is a given, and just because one customer group responds in a certain way, it’s no guarantee that yours will respond in the same way. There are no guarantees in direct marketing. Heck, maybe there’s no such thing as best practices.
Your brand is always evolving to keep up with the changing customer. Your core message might remain the same, but the way you communicate with them should be evolving. And you need to know that it’s evolving in the right ways before you roll out big changes to your whole customer file.
So, what does that mean? It means we test.
When you test, you often find things you weren’t looking for. And even an unexpected result can point to new approaches, new audiences, entirely NEW opportunities that await.
Need help crafting a test that will gain customer insights? Email me at laurena@jschmid.com – I’d love to help!
Tags: A/B testing, analytics, Customer Behavior, Strategy
