Testing in a Down Economy

By: Joseph Kiefer, ASM

I was lucky enough to have a marketing focused CEO for much of my tenure on the Marketing Management team. Expectations were always high and we were under close scrutiny, but we were given a lot of autonomy, which I think goes a long way towards job satisfaction in the marketing field. One primary goal our CEO had for our team was to have a constant stream of marketing tests going on at all times.

I truly believe this is the reason we have continued to get good results from our marketing efforts. This probably means different things to different companies, but in general, if you are not testing you are slowly declining.

In the direct marketing world there are a million things to test so there should never be a lack of opportunity. Creative, lists, offer, delivery, subject lines... and the list could literally go on forever. Which one can have the biggest impact on your bottom line? Shoot big!

These tests should be results driven and watching the results come in will be motivating to you and your staff. You will get to watch changes you are making have a positive impact on your company. Even for the tests that do not outperform the control you will be continually learning and adjusting for the next test.

Of course, this is only true if you set up good measurement devices for your marketing tests, so always be sure to have this in place before implementing the test. There is nothing worse then going through a test and not being able to measure the results at the end. An unmeasured test is typically a waste of effort and money. Even a marketing friendly CEO will not like the sounds of that.