#Update – Testing in sales and marketing! Talk a lot about it! Who does it? tips and tricks

Testing in Sales Marketing Dialog Marketing E-mail Marketing

This is an often quoted term. But how do you test correctly? What is an A/B test? What can you test? When are test results also meaningful, significant or just purely accidental? These are only a few of the important questions to consider. Therefore, we collect a lot of information about testing in sales, marketing, dialog marketing and e-mail marketing.

Have you defined a test budget? How much is it?

Every company should also have a test budget, similar to the research and development budget. I know companies that have reserved about 10-15% of their marketing and sales budget for testing. This usually includes communication tests, but also product or packaging tests.

Everything we have found and written on the topic so far here.

Thinking like a disciple of Bayes

The CEO of VWO, the market leader for A/B testing software, has been writing regular blog posts recently. I always enjoy it when people like him write about statistical correlations. Especially when they, I think, formulate it in such a way that the somewhat “less experienced number cruncher” can understand and comprehend it.

He formulates this as follows: It’s about…

An example: “Statistics is about the calculation of probabilities. There are two camps, which interpret probability differently.

Frequentists = Frequency of events over several attempts
Bayesians = subjective belief in the outcome of events”

Why he is a follower of Thomas Bayes he explains exciting to read in his article.

A Guide to A/B Testing

Hubspot has long been known for offering good content in the German language. Mostly for free, at least if you register.

The topic A/B-Testing for Marketing Optimization is a nice little document, which I often use for my lectures. The PDF for it is here.

Checklist: 20 tips for successful tests in e-mail marketing

Klickrate im E-Mail-Marketing durch Testen optimieren

DMEXCO: Optimizely presents advantages of digital testing

I do not hide the fact that I enjoy reading the newsletters of Paras Chopra, the founder and CEO of VWO, because he is one of the few who write about testing.

At the very top of this article you can also read his very exciting contribution to the disciples of Bayes.

Here are now different, further tips from his house:

A/B-Testing is like chess

The chess rules are easy to remember: a pawn moves one step forward, the queen can go anywhere and the final goal of the game is to protect the king. Once you have memorized the rules, the game is easy to set up and fun.

But the fact that it is simple in principle does not mean that it is also simple in practice. To play chess to perfection can take decades of daily practice and requires memorizing thousands of nuances about opening and closing moves and opponent strategies.

In this sense the A/B test is very similar to chess.

A/B testing is like chess

A/B tests get you a promotion

Yesterday I talked to a colleague and one of his spontaneous remarks hit a nerve with me. We talked about the fact that with A/B tests and experiments, all efforts are made in advance, but the reward is often very late.

He said that although the rewards of A/B tests are uncertain, when they come, they come with a certificate that says that you have made a real and tangible difference to something your company values.

Remember, an unchallenged proof of value creation is the most predictable way to get a promotion.