Before we kick off the weekend, let’s talk marketing! Here’s what we’re covering this week:

• The 5 laws of A/B testing. Great marketers make data-driven decisions. A/B testing is a way to determine what variables are impacting results so you can make optimizations to your marketing. These are five rules you must follow to run effective A/B tests.

• A hack for better cold outreach. Personalization is the key to successful cold outreach. Here’s a way you can break through the noise and actually get your email noticed.

🧪 The 5 laws of A/B testing.

A/B testing (aka split testing) is a method of testing which marketing variables bring about the highest conversion rate. Running these types of tests is a great way to learn how to drive more traffic, increase interactions, and generate more leads.

Here are 5 laws of A/B testing that you need to be following.

1) Only one test at a time.

Imagine you have an event coming up and you want to promote it via email. In the email, you plan to link to a landing page where people can sign up to attend.

You might decide to test which email subject line will get the best open rate, and test which landing page image results in the most signups.

But, if you run both of these tests at the same time, you’ll muddle the results. Which element worked? The subject line, the image, or both?

Instead, you have to test one hypothesis at a time. Otherwise, you won’t know which change impacted the conversion rate.

2) Only one variable at a time.

You have to isolate the variable of your A/B tests. Only test one thing at a time.

Let’s say you’re trying to optimize the demo signup page on your website. If you change the images, copy, colors, and call to action all at the same time, you’ll have no way of knowing which change made an impact.

Instead, you need to isolate each variable and run separate tests — an image test, copy test, color test, and CTA test.

3) Set up a control and a treatment.

All experiments must have a control version. This is the unaltered version of whatever you’re testing.

From there, create your treatment. This is the altered variation that you’re testing.

For example, if you’re wondering whether including a social proof section with customer reviews on your landing page will result in more form submissions, set up a control page without the new section. Then create your treatment variant with the social proof section added.

4) Test A & B at the same time.

Timing is a key part of marketing. It can have a big impact on a campaign’s results.

If you run the A version of a test in Q2 and then run the B version in Q3, there’s no way to know if the variable made an impact or if the change was due to the difference in timing.

You have to run both the A and B variations at the same time. Otherwise, you won’t be able to trust your results.

5) Randomly split your sample group.

If you want your test to have conclusive results, your list must be made up of similar people and then split up randomly between the A and B groups.

Otherwise, you won’t know if any improvements were because of the test variable or because of variations in the A and B audiences.

📰 In the news this week.

☑️ LinkedIn rolling out new verification and anti-scam features.

💰  Tips for marketing during a time of economic uncertainty.

🧓🏻 How generational differences affect consumer attitudes towards ads.

🔎  Google opens access to Search Generative Experience.

🤔 5 interesting stats to end your week.

🥶 A hack for better cold outreach.

Cold outreach is a crucial part of sales and marketing. But it’s also a tough part.

If you search Google for, “cold email templates” you’ll get thousands of results. But all of these boilerplate templates miss the most important part of successful cold outreach — personalization.

Most people receive several cold emails every day. And a lot of those emails sound eerily similar to each other (probably because they pulled some cold email template off of Google 😉).

If you want your email to get noticed, finding a way to stand out from the pack is your only hope.

Personalization is how you stand out.

Try this personalization method to get noticed.

The most effective way to do cold outreach is to custom-tailor your message to the person you’re communicating with. There is no easy hack for doing this. You actually have to spend the time to create a custom message.

You can stalk them online and scour their LinkedIn for little details like where they went to college or what their favorite TV show is. Then try to write a clever email that includes these details. All in hopes that it gets them to pay attention to you.

Or, you can do what we recommend — record a super short custom video.

Use a tool like Loom and record a 20-40 second video introducing yourself and explaining how you can provide value.

Then link that video in your email to them.

But don’t hit send yet! There’s one more detail that’s the key to this method’s success.

The custom thumbnail (aka the most important part).

Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, said it best:

If you want someone to click your video and watch it, make their first name shows in the video’s thumbnail.

This way, they know you’ve created something custom for them before they even watch. That’s enough to pique their interest and win you a click.

At the beginning of your video, hold a whiteboard or piece of paper with your target’s first name written on it. That way it will end up being in your thumbnail.

Pro tip:

If you have a few extra minutes, GIFs can be even more powerful than still-image thumbnails.

Create a gif from your video that shows you lip-synching your contact’s name. Like this:

This is added proof that you recorded a custom video and didn’t just photoshop the thumbnail to include their name.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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