Our team has been busy running tests on subject lines, persona-based email copy, and homepage messaging. 

For fun, here are the tests we're running up top. Take your best guess at which versions won and I'll spill all the deets below.

This month's tests: 

HOMEPAGE MESSAGING

• Reimagine the Way Your Buyers Experience Content vs.
• You Have Your Buyers' Attention—Now What? vs.
• Personalize the Buying Experience Every Time

EMAIL SUBJECT LINES

• Nurture Next: What Do Kawhi Leonard and you have in common? vs.
• Nurture Next: What Do Kawhi Leonard and {first name} have in common?

JOB-LEVEL-BASED EMAIL APPROACH FOR CONTENT LAUNCH

• C-Suite and other vs.
• Director vs.
• Practitioner

In each case, who do you think won? The answers may surprise you. Before you read below, take a minute to make a guess. And then scroll down a bit further for the results. 

Homepage Messaging

You may have noticed our homepage looks a teensy bit different. That's because it's totally revamped to feature our brand-spankin' new product videos. And while we were at it, we decided to test our homepage messaging. We've been tinkering with it for awhile. I mean it's your homepage—you need it to convert!

What we did: We tested three different messages to coincide with our product videos: (1) Reimagine the Way Your Buyers Experience Content, (2) You Have Your Buyers' Attention—Now What? (3) Personalize the Buying Experience Every Time. All three versions are similar in length (6 or 7 words), two are active (reimagine, personalize), and one uses a question to highlight buyer pain (Now What?).

Original

Variation 1

Variation 2

Variation 3

Why we did it: The original headline on our homepage "Personalize Content Experience at Scale" was not descriptive enough for users to understand at a glance what our platform does and our value proposition. We figured that changing up the copy in the headline on the banner of the homepage would increase clicks to the CTA and subsequent requests for demo. We just didn't know which version would produce the best results.

Results: The results were pretty astounding. As you can see below, variation #1 is the clear-cut winner. We split the traffic equally (four ways) and saw a decrease in bounce rate in all case, but a 7% increase in a visit to the demo request page (the main CTA on our homepage) and an 11% increase in conversion on the demo form.

Learnings: Sometimes it pays to try more than one variation. Going into this, we weren't sure which messaging would convert the best. Sure, some of us had our favorites, but no one was willing to bet their next paycheque on a clear-cut winner. And when it comes to your homepage, you darn well better be sure. 

Email Subject Lines

Ahhh yes, email subject lines. Will we ever stop testing these? No, and for good reason. They're easy and the payoff is immediate. For a recent content reveal campaign called Nurture Next (I teased it in the last newsletter), we tested subject lines to see which would perform better. For these emails, registrants have subscribed to receive content offers that are unlocked on a set schedule. This email was delivering the first piece of content unlocked in the sequence.

What we did: This email went out on June 17th, just three days after the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship. Since Kawhi Leonard is the star player, we rode that wave, applying it to our subject line. We also used personalization to test which version would work best.

Version 1

Nurture Next 🔒 What Do Kawhi Leonard and you have in common? 

Version 2

Nurture Next 🔒 What Do Kawhi Leonard and {first name} have in common?

Why we did it: We've had success in the past using pop culture (TV show references, music artists, etc.) and personalization, so we wanted to learn from our past wins but also test on a smaller, more specific audience like that of our content reveal program.

Results: Surprisingly, personalization didn't win in this case. The version without first name performed better than the version where the recipient's first name was used in the subject line.

Learnings: While it's good to follow what has worked for your organization in the past, you need to be strategic about your approach. Combining multiple learnings into a single subject line doesn't guarantee success. There is such thing as best practice overload!  

Job-Level-Based Email Approach For Content Launch

Wow, that's a mouthful. And what does that even mean? As I mentioned up top, we recently revealed some shiny new (and hilarious) product videos. So it stands to reason we wanted to make a splash with our launch. To do so, we took a "job-level-based email approach."

What we did: We segmented our database by job-level (c-suite, directors, practitioners) and wrote three very different emails with three very different approaches to our videos. We took a straight-forward approach for the C-suite and people who didn't fit into our buckets. For directors, we went personal and had our own Director of Content Experience appeal to others at her level with a common challenge or concern. And with the final group, our practitioners, we had the most fun really leaning into how silly product messaging can be sometimes since this group can most certainly relate. Take a look at our emails below.

For the C-Suite

For Directors

For Practitioners

Why we did it: Our videos are quirky. If you haven't seen them, you should. So for these launch emails we could either lean into the quirkiness or take a more formal approach. We thought being a bit more relatable based on job level would allow us to really resonate with our target audience. We've done this before based on personas and topic areas, but not as much for level of seniority within a marketing org.

Results:

Learnings: The best performing email (based on click-through rate) was the only one of the three sent by a real person in the role we were targeting. Personal touches make all the difference especially when the email is relatable! So where possible, even if it's only the level of seniority, speak person to person. Doing so can garner major returns!

That's it, that's all! Those are the tests we've been running and the results we've seen so far. What tests are you currently running (or planning to run)? Hit me up and let me know what cool things your marketing team is exploring or experimenting with :)