The marketing game is tough. In order to be successful, marketers need all the right tools at their disposal, such as A/B testing variables and data-driven decisions.
A/B testing is a type of marketing that determines which elements are most effective in driving conversions. These 20 variables measure successful campaigns. Read more in detail here: what is a/b testing in digital marketing.
Marketing analytics, contrary to popular belief, may be used to almost every other inbound marketing approach, including social networking, blogging, landing pages, lead creation, and lead nurturing. The number of ways to test your marketing initiatives is almost limitless.
While we think that marketers should test their marketing efforts on a regular basis, the first step is to identify the many marketing factors that may be tested. You’ll probably never run out of tests or experiments to conduct since so many of these factors are relevant across channels.
The testing factors listed below may offer great chances to tweak and increase the efficacy of your marketing campaigns.
A/B Test 20 Marketing Variables
1. Layout
Individual content pieces, such as blog posts, email marketing messages, lead nurturing emails, and website pages, such as landing pages, your main website homepage, your blog homepage, and so on, should all be tested for layout. Test the performance of one layout vs. another by moving components of your pages around.
On Asana’s website, you can see an example of a well-designed layout. You may change which side of the screen the picture shows on, where the header appears, and the sequence of the CTAs using this sort of style.
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2. CTAs (Calls to Action) (CTAs)
CTAs provide a variety of testing options. You may, for example, evaluate the effectiveness of different CTAs by placing them on different pages of your website and inside specific pieces of content like as blog posts, ebooks, and webinars.
SagaReach Marketing provides tools that enable you to execute an A/B test with numerous CTA versions. You may customize the size, color, and wording of the CTAs to see what works best for your visitors.
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3. Content Promotions
Different offerings, such as an ebook, a webinar, a free trial, and so on, make up call-to-actions. In terms of diverse content offers subjects in your sector and numerous forms, test calls-to-action (video vs. webinar vs. ebook vs. free trial, etc.).
Do you find that some offerings that are focused on a certain subject or in a specific style connect better with your audience? These sorts of testing may help you determine your prospects’ and customers’ desires and requirements, as well as assist you generate content that they care about.
The homepage of Nethunt is an outstanding illustration of several content offerings in action. The page includes CTAs such as “Log In,” “Start Here,” and “Watch Video.” When a visitor arrives at your site, you want them to concentrate on one or two objectives. You can find out which content kinds convert best by performing an A/B test on them.
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4. Color
Check the color of your website’s components. You may also test your website’s or blog’s entire color design. Do some colors inspire a stronger reaction than others?
Take a look at this case study to see how powerful colors can be. By altering the color of their CTA button from green to red, Performable, a marketing automation business bought by HubSpot, improved conversions.
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5. Size
Making a CTA button, an image, or a headline a few pixels larger may sometimes make a significant impact. Perhaps your title isn’t prominent enough to capture the attention of site visitors. Perhaps your call to action is too little to be seen. Adjust the size of these parts to see how well they perform.
MakeMyPersona from Toolbase offers a pop-up with two CTAs. “Grab the template!” has a lot more appealing design, size, and color than the “No, I’m OK for now, thanks” CTA.
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6. Subject Line for Email
In your email marketing and lead nurturing communications, test several variants of subject lines to see which ones have the greatest click-through rate. Do you find that a subject line that is more actionable or spectacular works better than others?
Teleflora just utilized the recipient’s name in the cart abandoned email subject line in the example below. And it resulted in a threefold increase in orders.
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7. Use of headlines
Do some headline testing and analysis as well. Do headlines with numbers create better results? Do you see a trend of certain terms that have regularly drawn a large number of views over time?
By changing the title, CitiCliq saw a 90 percent improvement in CTR.
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Email Sender No. 8
Experiment with different ways of presenting your email sender. Does a stand-alone name of one of your workers, for example, function better than the firm name? Isn’t it possible to combine the two?
Bamboo, a firm that helps consumers invest in and trade stocks in the United States, employs a customized email send address to attract the reader’s attention.
9. Pricing Strategy
Vendors may use a freemium, free trial, or time-limited money-back guarantee pricing strategy. If you’re a vendor, a/b testing your pricing model will help you figure out what rates work best for you.
When Acuity Scheduling switched from a freemium software approach to a 14-day free trial model, it saw a 250 percent spike in premium signups.
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10. Length of Copy
Test the length of your landing page copy and forms (shorter forms may be better for your business than longer forms, or vice versa), your content (do your readers prefer shorter or longer blog posts with more copy? ), your email messages, and social media updates such as tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn posts.
Conversion Rate Experts, for example, A/B tested Crazy Egg’s short-form landing page against a long-form challenger, which ended up outperforming the control by 30%.
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Landing Page 11
Have you experimented with the layout of your landing page? If you’re having trouble converting visitors, try a new landing page design and see what happens.
One of Groove’s landing pages converted at 2.3 percent. Conversions increased by 4.7 percent after they tweaked and tested a new landing page.
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12. Tone
In your writing and placement, experiment with various tones. Is a more serious approach more effective than one that is more edgy? But be cautious with this one: after you’ve done some research and found your most successful tone, stay with it. Throughout all of your messaging and material, your organization should have a distinctive, consistent voice.
Slack updated its logo and tone in 2019 to make it clearer and friendlier. Slack has remained one of the fastest-growing B2B firms because to a consistent voice across all of their platforms – website, social media, emails, and app.
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13. Photographs
In your blog articles, email messages, landing sites, CTAs, and other places, see how users react to various sorts of graphics.
By altering the background picture on their landing page, ConstructConnect saw a 35 percent boost in conversions.
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14. Be on time
Is it more common for your tweets to get retweeted in the morning or afternoon? Is it true that different days of the week are better for Facebook engagement? Perhaps your email marketing is more successful on Saturdays, while your blog postings are more popular in the middle of the week.
According to one research, tech sector Instagram posts perform better on Mondays, whereas Sunday is the worst day for these businesses to upload content.
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15. Recurrence
Is your target audience interested in receiving more or less updates from you, such as through email, tweets, blog articles, Facebook postings, and so on? Experiment with the frequency of your updates across multiple channels to see what works best.
Return Path did a large-scale research on the frequency of email campaigns and discovered that after five weekly emails, complaint rates skyrocketed.
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16. Text vs. Video Sales
Video is a very effective marketing tool. For example, 83 percent of video marketers feel it aids lead generation, and 91 percent are happy with video marketing’s return on investment.
While video production is more complicated and costly than text-based copywriting, it may be exactly what your company needs to boost conversions and is worth a/b testing.
Dr. Muscle utilized a 1-minute professionally produced video to encourage visitors to go through the handbook and programs for additional exercises. The number of visitors who progressed to the following sales funnel stage improved by 46.1 percent thanks to this video sales page.
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17. Forms
A few little modifications to your form will significantly enhance your conversion rates. A/B testing enables you to compare the outcomes of different form components such as buttons, design, length, and more.
Qualicorp modified a few forms on its website and did A/B testing on them. Overall conversion rates rose as a result of the new forms.
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18. Personalization and Targeting
Audience targeting is another paid search option you can experiment with. You may experiment with various targeting approaches on your homepage, landing pages, email marketing, and lead nurturing, among other places.
Shopify is a platform that allows company owners to create online shops for their websites. Its homepage performs an excellent job of satisfying the needs of site visitors.
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19. Copy for Sales
If you’re not getting enough conversions, it’s possible that your sales copy is to fault. It might be boring, perplexing, or intimidating. A/B testing may assist you in determining which version of the sales copy to utilize. You may even use A/B testing to see how your price page’s text looks.
Lyyti improved their price page and saw a 90 percent increase in lead conversions.
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20. Visualization of Data
What is the most effective approach for you to communicate information? In a pie chart, for example? Is it a graph? What’s this, an infographic? Experiment with various methods of visualizing your data to determine what works best.
With their Search Console interface, Google has perfected data visualization. With easy-to-understand charts and graphs, the dashboard visualizes all of the critical parameters from a website.
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Last Thoughts
So there you have it: 20 of the most important A/B testing variables to help you evaluate the performance of your marketing campaign.
So take a look at your existing marketing approach and see where you can make improvements. Some of these tests may involve a significant amount of time and work, but the benefits are typically well worth it.
Note from the editor: This article was first published in October 2011 and has been revised for accuracy.
Watch This Video-
The “when creating two email variations to test with a/b testing you should” is a blog post that discusses 20 A/B Testing variables. The article goes into detail about how these variables can be used in marketing campaigns.
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