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Contents
What can you test?
Interpreting test results.
One of the major benefits of direct
mail is its testability; that you can test and thus improve the results of
your mailing.
What can you test?
There are five main things you can test:
(1) The Package
(2) The List
(3) The copy
(4) The offer
(5) The price
Package testing -
NEED TO WRITE
List testing -
The most common
type of testing is testing a list. To test a list, you
need to mail to a representaive cross section of the
list. How many names is that? Well, there is a bit of
debate about that point, but in general you need to mail
to 2000 names or 5% of your list, which ever is greater.
As I stated earlier, it is important to get every nth
name, off the list for your test - every 10th or 12th
or whatver. Plus, you need to mark the list for
continuation, that is, mark the names you have mailed to
so if the test is successful, you don't mail to them
again.
Copy testing -
Next thing you can do is test your copy. You take
some part of your list and mail them one letter and at
the same time, mail different copy to the rest of the
lsit.
Offer testing -
The next thing you can test is your offer. Do you
offer 1 product in your mailing or several? Is there
afree gift or bonus? And so on.
Price testing -
Similarly, you can test
the price. By doing this, you can plot a demand curve
for your product - what happens to orders as price moves
up and down.
Interpreting test results.
If you have a tried and true mailer, then
use it for 90% of the mailing and use just 10% for the
test.
Also, as important as the test is, don't go
haywire over the results. An old trick in direct mail is
to mail to a large list the same exact package, but code
every other order form a and other one b. When comparing
resutls from the A list to B list - remember, competely
random, differences as much as 20% have been observed.
So basically, as you test, you increase the knowlede of
how to sell your product. You work good changes into the
pieces and keep testing. If you do a mialing without
testing something, you are wasting an opporunituy.
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