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Try Your Hand at A/B Testing for a Chance to Win the Email Subject Line Contest |
Try Your Hand at A/B Testing for a Chance to Win the Email Subject Line Contest Posted: 04 Jan 2015 04:10 PM PST Posted by danielburstein This blog post ends with an opportunity for you to win a stay at the ARIA in Vegas and a ticket to Email Summit, but it begins with an essential question for marketers… How can you improve already successful marketing, advertising, websites and copywriting? Today's Moz blog post is unique. Not only are we going to teach you how to address this challenge, we're going to offer an example that you can dig into to help drive home the lesson. Give the people what they wantSome copy and design is so bad, the fixes are obvious. Maybe you shouldn't insult the customer in the headline. Maybe you should update the website that still uses a dot matrix font. But when you're already doing well, how can you continue to improve?I don't have the answer for you, but I'll tell you who does – your customers. There are many tricks, gimmicks and technology you can use in marketing, but when you strip away all the hype and rhetoric, successful marketing is pretty straightforward – clearly communicate the value your offer provides to people who will pay you for that value. Easier said than done, of course. So how do you determine what customers want? And the best way to deliver it to them?Well, there are many ways to learn from customers, such as focus groups, surveys and social listening. While there is value in asking people what they want, there is also a major challenge in it. "People's ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor," according to research from Dr. Noah J. Goldstein, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, UCLA Anderson School of Management. Or, as Malcolm Gladwell more glibly puts it when referring to coffee choices, "The mind knows not what the tongue wants." Not to say that opinion-based customer preference research is bad. It can be helpful. However, it should be the beginning and not the end of your quest. …by seeing what they actually doYou can use what you learn from opinion-based research to create a hypothesis about what customers want, and then run an experiment to see how they actually behave in real-world customer interactions with your product, marketing messages, and website. The technique that powers this kind of research is often known as A/B testing, split testing, landing page optimization, and/or website optimization. If you are testing more than one thing at a time, it may also be referred to as multi-variate testing. To offer a simple example, you might assume that customers buy your product because it tastes great. Or because it's less filling. So you could create two landing pages – one with a headline that promotes that taste (treatment A) and another that mentions the low carbs (treatment B). You then send half the traffic that visits that URL to each version and see which performs better. Here is a simple visual that Joey Taravella, Content Writer, MECLABS create to illustrate the concept…
That's just one test. To really learn about your customers, you must continue the process and create a testing-optimization cycle in your organization – continue to run A/B tests, record the findings, learn from them, create more hypotheses, and test again based on these hypotheses. This is true marketing experimentation, and helps you build your theory of the customer. But you probably know all that already. So here's your chance to practice while helping us shape an A/B test. You might even win a prize in the process. The email subject line contestThe Moz Blog and MarketingExperiments Blog have joined forces to run a unique marketing experimentation contest. We're presenting you with a real challenge from a real organization (VolunteerMatch) and asking you to write a subject line to test (it's simple, just leave your subject line as a comment in this blog post). We're going to pick three subject lines suggested by readers of The Moz Blog and three from the MarketingExperiments Blog and run a test with this organization's customers. Whoever writes the best performing subject line will win a stay at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas as well as a two-day ticket to MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 to help them gain lessons to further improve their marketing. Sound good? OK, let's dive in and tell you more about your "client"… Craft the best-performing subject line to win the prizeEvery year at Email Summit, we run a live A/B test where the audience helps craft the experiment. We then run, validate, close the experiment, and share the results during Summit as a way to teach about marketing experimentation. We have typically run the experiment using MarketingSherpa as the "client" website to test (MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa are sister publications, both owned by MECLABS Institute). However, this year we wanted to try something different and interviewed three national non-profits to find a new "client" for our tests. We chose VolunteerMatch – a nonprofit organization that uses the power of technology to make it easier for good people and good causes to connect. One of the key reasons we chose VolunteerMatch is because it is an already successful organization looking to further improve. (Here is a case study explaining one of its successful implementations – Lead Management: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit decreased its sales cycle 99%). Another reason we chose VolunteerMatch for this opportunity is that it has three types of customers, so the lessons from the content we create can help marketers across a wide range of sales models. VolunteerMatch's customers are:
Designing the experimentAfter we took VolunteerMatch on as the Research Partner "client," Jon Powell, Senior Executive Research and Development Manager, MECLABS, worked with Shari Tishman, Director of Engagement and Lauren Wagner, Senior Manager of Engagement, VolunteerMatch, to understand their challenges, take a look at their current assets and performance, and craft a design of experiments to determine what further knowledge about its customers would help VolunteerMatch improve performance. That design of experiments includes a series of split tests – including the live test we're going to run at Email Summit, as well as the one you have an opportunity to take part in by writing a subject line in the comments section of this blog post. Let's take a look at that experiment… The challengeVolunteerMatch wants to increase the response rate of the corporate email list (B2B) by discovering the best possible messaging to use. In order to find out, MarketingExperiments wants to run an A/B split test to determine the best messaging. However the B2B list is relatively smaller than the volunteer/cause list (B2C) which makes it harder to test in (and gain statistical significance) and determine which messaging is most effective. So we're going to run a messaging test to the B2C list. This isn't without its challenges though, because most individuals on the B2C list are not likely to immediately connect with B2B corporate solutions messaging. So the question is… How do we create an email that is relevant (to the B2C list), which doesn't ask too much, that simultaneously helps us discover the most relevant aspect of the solutions (B2B) product (if any)? The approach – Here's where you come inThis is where the Moz and MarketingExperiments community comes in to help. We would like you to craft subject lines relevant to the B2C list, which highlight various benefits of the corporate solutions tool. We have broken down the corporate solutions tool into three main categories of benefit for the SaaS product. In the comments section below, include which category you are writing a subject line for along with what you think is an effective subject line. The crew at Moz and MarketingExperiments will then choose the top subject line in each category to test. Below you will find the emails that will be sent as part of the test. They are identical, except for the subject lines (which you will write) and the bolded line in the third paragraph (that ties into that category of value). Category #1: Proof, recognition, credibility
Category #2: Better, more opportunities to choose from
Category #3: Ease-of-use
About VolunteerMatch's brandSince we're asking you to try your hand at crafting messaging for this example "client," here is some more information about the brand to inform your messaging…
VolunteerMatch's brand identity
VolunteerMatch's core valuesTen things VolunteerMatch believes:
And now, we test…To participate, you must leave your comment with your idea for a subject line before midnight on Tuesday, January 13, 2015. The contest is open to all residents of the 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older. If you want more info, here are the official rules. When you enter your subject line in the comments section, also include which category you're entering for (and if you have an idea outside these categories, let us know…we just might drop it in the test). Next, the Moz marketing team will pick the subject lines they think will perform best in each category from all the comments on The Moz Blog, and the MarketingExperiments team will pick the subject lines we think will perform the best in each category from all the comments on the MarketingExperiments Blog. We'll give the VolunteerMatch team a chance to approve the subject lines based on their brand standards, then test all six to eight subject lines and report back to you through the Moz and MarketingExperiments blogs which subject lines won and why they won to help you improve your already successful marketing. So, what have you got? Write your best subject lines in the comments section below. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Related resourcesIf you're interested in learning more about marketing experimentation and A/B testing, you might find these links helpful…
And here's a look at a previous subject line writing contest we've run to give you some ideas for your entry…
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Often, the most important work we do doesn't bring a guaranteed, specific result. Usually, the result of any given action on our part is unknown.
Uncertainty implies a range of possible outcomes.
But a range of results, all uncertain, does not mean you are exposing yourself to risk. It merely means you're exposing yourself to an outcome you didn't have a chance to fall in love with in advance.
A simple example: the typical high school student applying to a range of colleges has very little risk of getting in nowhere. Apply to enough schools that match what you have to offer, and the odds are high indeed you'll get in somewhere. Low risk but a very high uncertainty about which college or colleges will say yes.
That's not risky. That's uncertain. It takes fortitude to live with a future that's not clearly imagined, but it's no reason not to apply.
Another example: If you speak to 100 people, it's uncertain which 40 people will be impacted by what you say. But the risk that you will resonate with no one is small indeed.
The question to ask every organization, manager, artist or yourself is, "are you hesitating because you're not sure the future will match your specific vision, or is there truly a project-endangering risk here?"
A portfolio of uncertain outcomes is very different from a large risk.
HT to Bert Spangenberg.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
US and Canadian Expatriates Comment on US Healthcare Posted: 04 Jan 2015 06:46 PM PST I have a couple more emails from readers in response to Single-Payer "Medicare for All" Proposal; Live and Let Die; Why Does Single-Payer "Work" in Europe? Comments From a US Expatriate Reader David a US citizen living in Europe writes ... Hi Mish,Views From a Canadian Expatriate Reader Peter, a now living in the US writes ... Hello MishNo Easy Solution? Actually there are plenty of solutions, some short-term, some long-term, all of them free market based. Making healthcare both better and more affordable is easy. Finding the political will to cooperate in fixing the problems is what's hard. I will propose eight healthcare reform ideas in a third post shortly. Even though they are free-market solutions, they are not at all incompatible with Obamacare. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
US Doctor Comments on Single-Payer "Medicare for All" Proposal Posted: 04 Jan 2015 02:01 AM PST I received many interesting comments from readers on Single-Payer "Medicare for All" Proposal; Live and Let Die; Why Does Single-Payer "Work" in Europe? This email is from a US M.D. named Ken. Ken writes ... I agree with everything you wrote, but you omitted a discussion of the variation of demand in relation to the cost. It is approximately correct to state that when the perceived cost to the user approaches zero, the demand for services approaches infinity. This is the crucial flaw in all "government-funded" single-provider programs. The demand for "free" services is impossibly huge.Ken is correct about unlimited demand for free services. I have talked about that issue before, just not in my recent post. There is not one thing in Obamacare that increases competition or reduces overall costs. Obamacare did not even lift the ban on drug imports so US taxpayers effectively subsidize the entire rest of the world. The government sets some prices but price setting and competition are certainly not the same thing. When prices are too low, shortages occur (or doctors drop out of the system), and the latter has happened. And nothing has been done about needless or repetitive tests. A number of previously uninsured persons are now insured, but this comes at the expense of making many others pay far more. Those who pay less are happy, those who pay more aren't. Obamacare is over 10,000 pages of legislation but did not fix a single problem with the "system". It did create a new set of winners and losers. "Medicare for All" with unlimited free services would be veritable disaster. I have a couple more emails to share, one from Europe and one from Canada. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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Quick, what's XIV squared?
You can't do advanced math without the zero. And you can't write precise prose without a well-developed vocabulary.
The magic of the alphabet is that twenty-six letters are all you need to spell every word. The beauty of Lego blocks is that you don't need very many to build something extraordinary.
Imagine how hard it would be to get anything done, though, if you only knew 17 letters.
In most fields your work is hindered if you only have a few of the most basic tools. Understanding more of the building blocks of finance, or marketing or technology are essential if you want to get something important done.
Here's my advice: Every time you hear an expert use a word or concept you don't understand, stop her and ask to be taught. Every time. After just a few interactions, you'll have a huge advantage over those who didn't ask.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Posted: 03 Jan 2015 02:35 PM PST There's an amusing pair of headlines back-to-back today on what a Greek exit from the Eurozone might mean. One view is catastrophic, the others is along the lines of no problem. Let's start with the catastrophe. Economic historian Barry Eichengreen says Greek Euro Exit Would be 'Lehman Brothers Squared. A decision by a new Greek government to leave the eurozone would set off devastating turmoil in financial markets even worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a leading international economist warned Saturday.Limited Contagion Thesis Yahoo!Finance reports Germany Believes Eurozone Could Cope with Greece Exit. The German government believes that the euro zone would now be able to cope with a Greece exit if that proved to be necessary, Der Spiegel news magazine reported on Saturday, citing unnamed government sources.Competing Views on Funding Needs Before taking a side in the above debate, let's take a look at competing views on Greek funding needs. Please consider a snip from SYRIZA Makes Fresh Pledge to Defend Greek Capitalism. Analysts at Bank of America Merill Lynch, "think Tsipras will face a budget black hole of at least 28 billion euros in the first two years of his government, with nowhere to borrow from and 17 billion euros of repayments to make in the first year."In contrast, the Wall Street Journal reports Greece Expects Primary Budget Surplus for 2015. Greece's 2015 budget, submitted by the government to parliament on Friday, aims to meet the fiscal demands of the country's creditors but comes without the prior approval of its troika of international inspectors.Primary Account Surplus or Not? Does Greece have a €28 billion black hole or a surplus? Both can technically be true. The €28 black hole counts interest on debt including the €245 bailout package. The primary surplus theory ignores interest on the debt. If the Troika suspends the bailout, then Greece will have no choice but to default. Of course, that points to the absurdity of the alleged bailout setup in the first place. Even if the interest rate on the bailout was 0%, at €3 surplus every year, it would take Greece 81 years to pay back that debt! Economic Reality There is no realistic way Greece can ever pay back €245 billion, so it won't. With that thought, let's return to the first question. Would a Greece exit be "Lehman Squared" or would it have little effect? Actually, no matter what happens with Greece, the entire eurozone setup is unstable. Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal all are in impossible payback setups. Even if Syriza loses the next election, sooner or later Greece, Spain, Italy, or possibly even France will exit the eurozone. The "limited contagion" view is complete nonsense. The eurozone debt problem is going to explode, and whether or not it becomes "Lehman Squared" depends on the response. My view is the longer the ECB and EU attempt to hold this mess together with no debt writedowns, the bigger the catastrophe. Greece will not cause a catastrophe, but the EU/ECB handling of a Greece exit is highly likely to do just that. Eventually, Will Come a Time As I said in my November 23, 2011 post Eventually, Will Come a Time When .... Eventually, there will come a time when a populist office-seeker will stand before the voters, hold up a copy of the EU treaty and (correctly) declare all the "bail out" debt foisted on their country to be null and void. That person will be elected.Possibilities
Where to Point the Finger When it Blows The pot is simmering and is likely to boil over at any time. When it does boil over, Greece will not really be to blame, even if Alexis Tsipras wins the election and carries out his threats. Rather, be prepared to point the finger at the EU, ECB, and IMF for their collective insistence that Greece, Spain, Italy, etc. repay debt that cannot and will not be paid back. By the way, there is a small chance Tsipras wins the election and Greece exits the eurozone with limited initial fallout. If so, the major problem will come when Spain or Italy does the same thing. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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Important decisions carry risk and can unnerve and distract us.
One instinct is to delay, merely because doing something risky and distracting later is better than doing it now. That's the wrong strategy.
You should decide the moment that new information relevant to the decision is more expensive to obtain than the cost, the inaction and the anxiety of waiting.
So, don't apply to 30 colleges and see which ones you get into before you decide. That'll cost you thousands of dollars and take up months of your life.
Don't delay hiring a great CMO merely because it's entirely possible that other resumes might appear one day. Your hesitation might cost you the person you've found, and going three more months without a great person on board is way more expensive than waiting for Ms. Perfect.
Make high leverage decisions early, and profit from your ability to take advantage of commitments when others are still in limbo.
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