Here’s a look at a recent test that Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS, ran on the “Newsletter” tab of the MarketingSherpa Facebook Page.
PLANNING
Here is a look at Zuzia’s hypothesis before she ran the test …
“The control tab lacks value and is very general, which could cause anxiety to visitors because it’s not clear what they would receive if they enter their email address. The treatment page will provide customers value by having a clear headline and subheadline. It will also provide a list of subscriptions a visitor would receive by putting in their email address.”
Primary Research Question: Which tab test will generate the highest conversion rate?
Variables That Will Be Tested: Headline, subheadline, information layout
What We Will Learn: If the treatment wins over the control, this means that visitors prefer a more informational tab rather than a very general one.
CONTROL
The control gave visitors the option to subscribe to the MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Newsletter.
TREATMENT
The treatment gave visitors the option to choose which MarketingSherpa newsletters they would like to receive.
The treatment provides a more informational headline and subheadline, emphasizing the collection of case studies and research. The list of the subscriptions immediately tells customers what they can receive.
RESULTS
The treatment received 22.3% more conversions. (Note: This was a small sample-size test.)
What you need to understand
Visitors prefer a more informational tab emphasizing each subscription.
“It seems that our Facebook fans prefer to have control on what to check for their newsletter rather a more general option,” Zuzia said.
Related Resources:
Social Media Marketing: Should Facebook host your landing page?
Facebook Marketing in Six Steps: How to successfully manage your fan page
Social Media Marketing: How I found the Facebook topic that was 371% more effective
I really like allowing subscribers to select the content they prefer to receive. But what happens when a subscriber “opts-out”? Is their email removed from the system entirely? With my current email provider system, if a subscriber wants to stop receiving a particular email, they wind up opting out of the entire system.
I’m searching for an email service provider that would allow users to customize their preferences beyond a black/white choice. Any suggestions?
Judi,
When subscribers opt-out, you can give them them the option to opt-down or even pause their email subscription, instead of a full opt out. For example, if someone were to want opt-out of the MarketingExperiments email list (I don’t know why anyone ever would want to, natch) — https://www.marketingexperiments.com/create-your-marketingexperiments-account.html — they have the option to opt-down to only our Best of the Month email send instead of totally opting out.
We are vendor agnostic and do not recommend specific ESPs, however, this article might help you in your search for an ESP in general — http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/how-to/email-service-provider-selection
Hi Daniel,
I’m curious, what do you use to split test on Fb tabs that are mobile compatible?
Thanks for the question Samuel.
The last project I worked on, Facebook tabs weren’t mobile compatible, so not sure how you can split test them. Maybe I’m missing something?