There is so much to write that a whole book could easily be written about that subject. Actually I have plans about writing such
a book sometime in the future.
WHAT TO TEST
There is many, many ways of testing. And there is many things to test.
For instance you can test:
*your headlines (in salesletters, ads, e- mails etc.)
*your order forms
*the body copy of your salesletters
*the fonts of your salesletters
*the price of your products
*your offer
*your way of marketing
Just to mention a few! There is many other factors you can test.
JUST TEST ONE THING AT THE TIME
When you test something, it's of the utmost importance that you only test one variable at the time. For instance you may change
the headline in one of your salesletters to see how much it will affect the number of orders you get from your salesletter. If you
change both the headline and your orderform at the same time, you won't know for sure if it's the headline or the order-form
that affected the number of orders you get from that letter.
So don't test more than one variable at the time!
A/B SPLIT TESTS
Rick, let me just mention one way of testing, that's very used by the more clever Internet marketers - namely SPLIT TESTS.
This kind of test is also called A/B Split.
EXAMPLE: A PRICE TEST
Let's say you want to test the price of a new product.
You decide to write a sales-letter for the new product and send that sales-letter to your customer database with an e-mail!
When you use this way of testing, you split up the number of people you're addressing, in two equal halfs.
Then you make two totally identical e-mail messages - EXCEPT for the price for the product.
In the first e-mail you decide to price the product at $59.
In the second e-mail you decide to price the product at $69.
Now you make two order-forms on your website - one for each e-mail. Consequently, on the first order-form your product is
priced at $59, and on the second order-form, your product is priced at $69. The first e-mail has a link to the first order-form,
and the second has a link to the second order-form.
Then you send the first e-mail to the first half of your customer database. And the second e-mail to the second half.
Then you keep an open with the number of orders you get from each order-form. Besides you calculate the total amount of
dollars you earn from each mailing.
You also have to remember that even if you earn more money from the $69 salesletter, you may get fewer orders totally.
Because if you get fewer orders totally from the $69 (even though earn more totally), you will get fewer customers to sell your
back-end product to.
Rick, this is just a short description of one way of testing. There are several other ways of testing. For instance you can use
autoresponders to make tests.
I hope you found this helpful, Rick!
Sincerely,
Klaus
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