Misconception 1: It’s All About The Subject Line

For lots of marketers, “A/B email testing” starts and stops at the subject line. The truth is that there’s several variables you can and should test, such as:

• Open rates at different times of the day and week, along with varying subject lines; and
• Post-open engagement and conversion factors, such as body copy, headline copy, offer/promo, CTA, background colors or the order of content blocks.

You should make a point of updating your list periodically with other elements to test. The more you test, the more you learn.

One last note on this subject: Changes in open rate are relatively murky post-iOS 15, which is even more reason to expand the scope of variables to test.

Misconception 2: You Can Test Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Clean A/B tests involve one variable, not many: Don’t switch up a subject line and time of send and day of week, or you won’t know which one(s) made a difference. Beyond that, they require focus on specific elements within that variable.

Since people love to talk about subject lines, let’s use that as an example. Wildly different subject lines will perform differently, but you won’t understand why. On the other hand, if you’re testing specific differences like emojis versus no emojis, question versus statement, etc., you’ll have a clear takeaway from the data.

Misconception 3: Instant Wins Abound

One of the biggest misconceptions is that each A/B test might just produce a silver bullet. In fact, A/B testing results are best seen in aggregate, over the long term. If you’re structuring your tests well and getting information to optimize future sends, the wins will mount steadily over time.

One reason you shouldn’t expect instant results is that the audience for the test will be split in half: Even if one version knocks the other out of the park, 50% of your audience will still be underperforming in comparison.

Last thing here: Depending on the test, you might not find any kind of winner. Inconclusive findings are fairly common, and it doesn’t mean the test was flawed. Instead, it simply means the variable you introduced — e.g., changing the copy format to bullet points — didn’t move the needle one way or the other.

Misconception 4: Once A Winner, Always A Winner

A winning test from six months ago might not be a winner if the same test were run today. That’s not to say you should relaunch tests in rigid six-month intervals, but you should keep an eye on any winning campaigns to make sure their performance remains strong. If you see engagement trending steadily down over time (rather than witnessing one bad send and over-reacting), it might be your signal to take another look.

Misconception 5: The Truth Is Universal

We love a good best practice at DMi, but we also know there are exceptions to every rule that you won’t know until you test. For instance, for one client, we personalized a CTA to reflect the person’s location (e.g. “Find businesses in {city}!”), and performance was far lower than the email with the non-personalized CTA.

In other words, work with guidelines — not assumptions —and be prepared for some surprises along the way.

Misconception 6: A/B tests Are Always A Good Idea

Speaking of universal truths, while we love A/B tests, they aren’t always a good strategic move! If you need to push out an email for the sake of engagement and performance, put your best foot forward (informed by all the learnings from past A/B tests, of course) rather than segmenting your audience and risking a less-than-optimal performance from 50% of the list.

Misconception 7: There’s No Value In Failure

If you test a great idea that falls flat, it can be hard on the ego — but it’s also important knowledge that you need to file away for reference. Remember that the aggregate value of A/B testing comes in the insights you can apply over time, and you’ll reframe “failure” as a valuable piece of information.

How important is it to get A/B email testing right? Well, as media costs soar and first-party data usage becomes even more important, email marketing has a very important role in holistic marketing strategies. Great A/B testing that helps you raise the levels of your email engagement over the long term is one of the best investments you can make for your marketing growth.

Lauren McGrath is an Associate Email Strategy & Execution Manager at digital marketing agency DMi Partners, which she joined in 2021. Lauren, a New Jersey native who earned a bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising and an MBA from Thomas Jefferson University, builds and optimizes email campaign execution processes for a portfolio of brands across B2C, CPG and B2B verticals. She began her email marketing career in 2018 and is passionate about raising the bar for email performance standards across the marketing industry.

The post 7 Misconceptions About Email A/B Testing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Key insights from the Guides include:

• Organizations with strong alignment among their marketing, digital and customer experience (CX) teams report 1.6X faster revenue growth than their peers and 1.4X better customer retention;
• As AI deployments become ubiquitous, firms should invest in building policies and frameworks around data access, usage, sharing, storage and retention to retain customer and employee trust;
• CX leaders often struggle to build momentum and drive action from their mapping efforts;
• Leaders should inventory and replace their bespoke applications and isolated infrastructure that only serves one or a few applications; and
• Platform teams are cross-functional product-centric teams that build and maintain tooling, infrastructure and services, enabling other IT and business teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications.

“Optimistic budget expectations will serve leaders well as they enter 2025, but they need to be super thoughtful about investing in areas that support their firms’ overall growth,” said Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer at Forrester, in a statement. “While leaders should continue to experiment with more advanced AI capabilities in 2025, those shouldn’t be the only experiments they pursue. They should prioritize investments that benefit their entire firm and help establish long-term trust with customers and partners. Forrester’s Budget Planning Guides provide detailed guidance on where leaders should invest, pull back and strategically experiment to succeed amid continual, rapid change.”

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Despite the rise of other B2C communication methods, roughly 61% of consumers still opt for text messaging over social media or phone calls for customer service-related matters, like asking questions. As a result, it’s clear that companies without this messaging solution are limiting their ability to build a stronger rapport and grow their business.

While channels like WhatsApp and social media have evolved, texting is growing in value for businesses as both a marketing and business communication tool. SMS allows companies to build stronger relationships with consumers thanks to a higher degree of personalization and immediacy powered by personalized data and smart messaging automation platforms.

Today, text messaging is delivering entirely new best practices for customer communications, helping companies build better messaging strategies, improve trust and drive engagement.

Intuitive & Adaptable SMS Solutions

As technology like AI and the cloud have advanced, messaging communication platforms have become more intuitive and intelligent. They listen to what businesses and their customers need and suggest better and timelier communication strategies for the right engagement. As such, these programs guide companies to achieve stronger connections with their clients.

For example, many SMS platforms now provide pre-programmed messaging templates tailored to specific industries that can improve customer engagement. These messages range from new client inbound inquiries to efficient document collections and payment reminders, reducing the company resources typically needed to respond to multiple inquiries or complete these tasks.

SMS messaging solutions have also evolved to make personalization much easier to achieve. By easily integrating with popular CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, which handle valuable customer data, the programs work in tandem to deliver real-time personalized responses that speak to the customer’s needs.

Because traditional digital marketing campaigns come with a hefty price tag, it can seem as if SMS campaigns could cost just as much. But in reality, these solutions deliver the strongest response rates and efficient ROI without breaking the bank. SMS messaging platforms have become widely accessible to companies of all sizes, giving them a cost-effective way of connecting with new and existing customers. This creates a dual advantage of having a tool that can maximize your marketing and customer service strategy.

Messaging That Builds A Trusted Customer Relationship

Every opportunity to interact with customers is a chance to improve the most critical aspect — trust. So, when a customer opts in to receive text messages, it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

First, consumers trust that they won’t receive regular spam and messages that don’t apply to their needs, which U.S. regulations have also recently ensured. That’s why proactive customer engagement and messaging controls that limit the likelihood of spam are needed to create a trusting relationship.

Secondly, 74% of consumers say that quickly responding to and resolving their concerns is important to earning trust. SMS messaging has already been proven to provide a faster response rate than phone calls or email. Combined with automation, SMS platforms allow companies to automatically respond to inquiries and identify keywords in messaging to generate quick and accurate replies. They also help them identify and escalate messages that suggest customer dissatisfaction and potential churn.

Automation That Drives Higher Engagement

We associate SMS messaging with the most personal form of communication — messaging our friends and family, which is usually direct, conversational and personalized. SMS platforms and their automated technology allow businesses to boost customer engagement by fostering a strategy that offers the same sense of closeness.

Consumers are more inclined to engage with conversational messages geared to their interests rather than a sales pitch. Automated messaging that implements personalized customer data can power these connections, fostering the feeling of personal engagement when communicating with clients. For example, using their name and referencing products or services they’ve shown interest in.

Businesses should never miss an opportunity to be readily available to new and existing customers. AI technology has now evolved to deploy personalized conversations, campaigns and quick responses through its ability to integrate with CRM programs, allowing companies to deliver valued customer experiences with every interaction. These solutions, combined with an SMS strategy that prioritizes trust and personalization, will undoubtedly increase customer engagement and brand value and create better business results.

Nitin Seth is the Founder and CEO at Conversive, a digital messaging solution that offers AI features and CRM integrations.

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Named one of Forbes’ Top 10 Marketers, Patel is known for simplifying complex concepts and providing actionable advice on topics such as digital marketing, buyer behavior, AI, emerging technologies, paid advertising and entrepreneurship. With more than 23 years of experience and a following of more than 3 million across social platforms, he continues to empower the marketing community and make marketing knowledge accessible to all. During his keynote, “Winning B2B Marketing Strategies: Demystifying The Art of Selling To Businesses,” Patel will uncover proven tactics and innovative approaches to effectively sell products and services to other businesses.

“The entire team and I are beyond thrilled to welcome Neil Patel and NP Digital to the #B2BMX community,” said Klaudia Tirico, Content Director for the B2B Marketing Exchange events, in a statement. “It’s truly an honor to have a digital marketing authority like Neil take our stage to share his unparalleled expertise and razor-sharp knowledge of the B2B industry with our audience. I am confident our attendees will walk away from his keynote with the right tools and tactics to transform their business.”

Patel joins an already impressive lineup of speakers, including Pam Didner, Founder and VP of Marketing at Relentless Pursuit; Mason Cosby, Founder of Scrappy ABM; and Britney Bartlett, VP of Global Field Marketing at Cisco. The three-day event will also feature breakout sessions, workshops, case studies and endless networking opportunities with speakers and attendees from companies such as Momentum/ITSMA, WIKA USA, Ignite 360 and more.

For more information and to register for the event, visit the B2BMX East website.

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As much as we talk about the power of customer experiences, there’s still a major disconnect in what individuals expect and companies provide. At the end of the day, you want customers to know you have their back — and ironically enough, stressful times are the prime opportunity to build trust.

With reports indicating that businesses can expect to lose $3.7 trillion annually due to poor customer service, here are three steps B2B companies can take to rebuild trust and forge stronger relationships when complications emerge.

1. Respond As Quickly As Possible

No matter how polished your product or service might be, there’s no such thing as perfect — product limitations/failures and buyer frustrations will inevitably bubble up at some point during the buyer’s journey (though they might not be as wide-spread as a complete ground stop). And when these issues inevitably occur, 87% of B2B buyers will let that bad experience negatively impact their relationship with the business.

With that in mind, the No. 1 way to remedy a poor customer experience is to respond to their complaints as quickly as possible. The research — conducted by Accenture — suggested companies should actively listen to the customer’s concerns and delve deeper to understand the root cause of the bad experience.

To Chatbot, Or Not To Chatbot?

In theory, fielding a mass influx of complaints seems like prime time for chatbots to shine — however, in high-stress circumstances where temperatures are already running hot, it might be best to use chatbots sparingly.

When it comes to chatbots to field customer complaints, our advice is to proceed with caution: While 75% of customers favor live agents for resolving issues, compared to 13% for chatbots, chatbots still have a place to provide low-level support and give customers an idea of wait times for live agents.

2. Directly Address The Issue

According to Forrester’s 2023 Global Buyers’ Journey Survey, honesty and transparency are crucial for B2B buyers, especially in times of turmoil. When things go wrong, practitioners’ best bet is to explain the root cause of the issue and keep the customer informed throughout the resolution process, which includes updating them on the steps being taken and the expected timeframe for improvement.

A report from Edelman-LinkedIn underscored how thought leadership and open communication significantly impact B2B buyers’ decisions, as 71% of B2B buyers are more likely to engage with a company that demonstrates open and honest communication about its products and services.

Remain Transparent

While it’s intimidating to own up to your mistakes, it’s often the best solution to save relationships. Failures and shortcomings are a part of life, and sometimes the best thing to do is the lean into those mishaps and discuss how you’ll improve future processes. When companies can embrace their mistakes and not shrink away from them, it’ll foster more trust between companies and buyers. In a competitive market, transparency becomes a differentiator, attracting customers who value upfront information.

3. Reinforce Trust After The Fact

If your buyer faced a problem that sullied their experience, they want to know what steps you’ll take to prevent similar disruptions in the future. And in this case, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work; instead, tailor communications and solutions to address the specific issue. With the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer indicating that 88% of respondents believe trust is critical or important, businesses should foster a culture that values customer satisfaction above all else. This will empower employees to focus on the customer experience and make decisions that benefit them in the long run.

Incentivize Customers To Stay

While it’s great you’ve apologized and let your customers know you’ll do everything in your power to prevent future issues, the reality is an issue already happened, and no matter how well you handled the situation, there’s still going to be a bad taste in a customers’ mouth. But luckily, there’s a solution: Gifts.

Approximately 52% of recipients are more likely to do business with a company after receiving a corporate gift​, while personalized and well-timed corporate gifts can significantly strengthen client relationships, leading to better client retention and potential referrals​. And these don’t have to break the bank, either: The key is to choose gifts that are thoughtful, personalized and useful to the recipient, such as gift cards to their favorite restaurant or coffee shop.

Strong CX = Stronger Relationships

While the Crowdstrike SNAFU primarily exacerbated customer service issues on the B2C side, it placed a renewed focus on B2B CX and how it is mission critical for success. Companies with strong customer relationships can see retention rates increase by up to 5%, which can boost profits by 25 to 95%.

In times of turmoil, B2B’s best bet is to open direct lines of communication, address issues head-on and ensure they remain transparent in all their processes across the board.

The post Embracing The Service Recovery Paradox: 3 B2B Marketing Lessons From The Crowdstrike Failure appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Trilliad aims to align and optimize the entire buying experience across marketing, sales and customer success by providing services that help increase seller productivity, lower cost per lead, decrease cost per sale, accelerate time to close and drive customer lifetime value. For its part, Just Global offers full-funnel solutions that seek to provide services across strategy, media, creative, content and analytics to break down marketing silos.

“In the current landscape, aligning marketing and sales for shared growth delivers a competitive edge for organizations,” said Craig Dempster, CEO of Trilliad. “We are thrilled to welcome the impressive Just Global team to Trilliad. This marks a major step in our journey to offer something unique and essential with a new growth services provider category. We are shaping our services to power unified performance and produce real results for B2B brands globally.”

The post Just Global Joins Trilliad To Create ‘B2B Growth Services Provider’ Category appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

When my company Outsnapped launched its first AI photo booth in early 2023, we noticed that gen AI is inherently conducive to collecting all kinds of information — and putting a smile on a future customer’s face while doing it.

3 Methods For Leveraging AI Technology

Here are three ways you can employ the technology and begin tapping into a retargeting goldmine.

1. Give Trade Show & Event Attendees A One-Of-A-Kind Experience

If your company has an annual trade show or conference (or attends them as a vendor), offering participants gen AI images with an onsite photo booth is the opposite of handing out drink koozies with your logo. While one will likely end up in the back of a kitchen cabinet somewhere, the other might end up on their social media profile.

AI photo booth technology can turn a simple selfie into an AI avatar and deliver unique images with that avatar within minutes in exchange for that crucial email address. True gen AI renderings are far more than swapping backgrounds — a simple headshot can be used to generate a person’s AI avatar riding on horseback into a canyon, closing a deal, looking like a boss or in full superhero regalia ready to take on the next challenge.

You’ll want to be sure to work with a vendor that can design an interactive experience that aligns with your brand, but the forms that experience take are almost endless.

2. Gamify Experiences & Use The Process To Get More Info Than Email Addresses

Many of us remember illustrations and cartoons of robots in scenarios where a human says a command and the robot goes, “Bleep bloop” and does the thing. Well, the command part with gen AI — the input that dictates the output — is where demand gen marketers have a huge advantage in collecting potential customer data easily and willingly.

If you’re really focused on customer education in a niche market — say time-saving cleaning appliances — you might ask a prospect to choose their cleaning style, design inspiration (i.e. modern, vintage, minimalist) and the area of the house they struggle the most with — and then render images that show their AI avatar smiling and laughing in a spotless dream living room or kitchen.

Any type of answer can affect image generation as part of a carefully crafted behind-the-scenes process. For example, if you ask where people spend their time online, answering “over X hours spent on social media” might generate lightning bolts in the images of these participants, providing striking visual data that can help you target customers more efficiently.

3. Build Trusting Relationships With Your brand Over Time & Fight Retargeting Fatigue

Using gen AI to create cool, personalized experiences is possible in a variety of situations beyond a physical photo booth. Experiences can be digital on any device and live on a landing page or within an app. You might use gen AI to render text experiences instead of images to make participants a character in a short story, or deliver a scene in a script for a TV pilot based on their life (using the answers they disclose).

People love AI photos of themselves, but AI can render images of anything you can imagine (and many things you can’t). In your brand’s email newsletter, you could invite people to create images of “the most irresistible pizza” on a special landing page and give away a pizza party to the winner.

To avoid some of the pitfalls of gen AI (like bias, or extra fingers), always work with someone who is an expert on creating prompts and behind-the-scenes guardrails. Just like any other marketing experience or event, you have to think through worst case scenarios and test it out before going live. You aren’t going to have an open, self-serve bar in a high school gymnasium during school hours, right? So don’t be like Bing, who let bad actors ruin the reputation of Mickey Mouse faster than the beloved character can say, “Oh boy!”.

Take Advantage Of Free Tools To Dip Your Toe In Gen AI’s Creative Potential

It’s a great time to play with AI image generators that are currently free, such as DALL-E 2, Microsoft Designer and Canva, as they definitely won’t be free forever. Render an animal hybrid, the perfect cake or a tropical escape for your mood board and have some fun with it!

Remember, beyond the stereotype of faceless AI robots is a magical capability that can make interactions with future customers feel MORE human, not less.

Nicholas Rhodes is the Founder and Creative Director of photo booth agency OutSnapped. 

The post Generative AI Experiences: 3 Ways To Tap Into A New Retargeting Goldmine appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

As practitioners work to infuse brand and demand activities into their email marketing strategies to promote hyper-personalized communication with prospects and customers, this webinar will discuss how targeting specific accounts with tailored messages can enhance both brand perception and demand generation, leading to more effective and efficient marketing outcomes.

Join Exclaimer’s Ashley Topping, Reachdesk’s Sofia Silva and 6sense’s EJ Oelling as they share insights into:

• The intrinsic link between brand building and demand generation;
• Effective strategies for creating a brand that drives demand;
• The role of 1:1 communication in modern marketing;
• How to integrate ABM strategies to target and engage key accounts effectively; and
• Best practices for personalizing customer interactions through email.

The post The Brand-Demand Connection: Your Secret 1:1 Email Marketing Weapon appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Solution Overview

Nimble CRM now includes Email Sequencing in its features for existing and new customers.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

According to Nimble, Email Sequencing helps:

• Enable lead creation and data enrichment directly from web platforms like LinkedIn, alongside robust segmentation features;
• Streamline lead management by responding to leads and delivering personalized experiences without manual intervention; and
• Automate repetitive tasks such as sending emails, scheduling follow-ups and logging sales activity by automatically storing all prospect interactions.

Who It’s For

Email Sequencing seeks to help teams accelerate customer outreach, lead qualification and deal cycles. It’s designed to complement Nimble CRM’s existing capabilities to simplify time-consuming tasks such as LinkedIn prospecting, data enrichment and compiling targeted outreach lists. Email Sequences reportedly enables teams to send automated, logically sequenced follow-up emails, as well as smoothly transition contacts through lead qualification workflows into deal pipelines.

What Makes It Special

A Nimble spokesperson noted that Email Sequencing is a vital tool for customer relations and sales outreach.

Contact

Nimble

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Transparency In AI

A few months ago, there were some events in the media that highlighted the importance of maintaining transparency while using AI. From Kate Middleton’s photoshop mishap to the Willy Wonka exhibit in Scotland whose promotional images promised much more than what was delivered, consumers are beginning to feel skeptical over the use of AI — and for good reason. Deepfakes and misinformation that are generated using AI tools have decreased consumer trust, making it hard for buyers to know what’s real and what’s bogus.

“AI watermarking” has been proposed to combat this problem, which is the practice of embedding a recognizable, unique signal into the output of an AI model, such as text or an image, to identify that content as AI-generated. With AI watermarking, the fake images of Kate Middleton and the Willy Wonka exhibit could be identified as AI-generated, making it easy for audiences to know if the images have been altered or fake.

Unfortunately, AI watermarking isn’t foolproof and most likely won’t stop disinformation altogether. That’s why it’s important for marketers to practice transparency and responsible AI usage, as it’s not all bad — AI innovation has plenty of positive impacts across different industries.

Where Marketers Benefit Most From Responsible AI Usage

By focusing on responsible AI usage, marketers will not only comply with ethical and legal standards but also build trust with consumers and employees. At the same time, they can also enhance operational efficiency and position their brands as industry leaders to promote long-term loyalty and greater competitive advantage. A few ways marketers can benefit from responsible AI use include:

Enhanced Customer Insights

AI can analyze large amounts of data from different sources to provide rich insights into consumer behavior, preferences and trends. Marketers can practice this responsibly by ensuring that they are only gathering accurate insights while also respecting consumer privacy and ethical guidelines.

Improved Personalization

AI enables marketers to easily tailor content, recommendations and advertisements to individual consumer needs and preferences. Through responsible AI usage, this personalization is done without compromising user privacy and trust, ultimately enhancing customer experience and satisfaction without feeling invasive.

Customer Service Optimization

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide quick and efficient customer service. By being transparent about when customers are interacting with AI, marketers can improve customer satisfaction while ensuring that the technology is used in an ethical manner.

Risk Management & Sales Compliance

AI can help marketers remain compliant by streamlining consent management, assisting in adhering to local, state and federal compliance standards and more. Additionally, AI enables marketers to quickly adapt to evolving regulatory landscapes, ensuring ongoing compliance and consumer trust.

How To Leverage AI To Target New Leads

Perhaps the greatest benefit that marketers gain from practicing responsible AI use is the ability to target new leads. Consumers see hundreds of ads and messages per day, and AI allows for highly personalized marketing experiences tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. By leveraging AI-powered recommendation engines, chatbots and content customization tools, marketers can break through the noise to deliver targeted messages and offers that resonate with each individual customer, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Marketers can also target new leads through AI’s advanced customer segmentation and audience targeting capabilities based on detailed behavioral and demographic data. Practitioners can use AI algorithms to segment their audience into specific groups and create targeted campaigns that resonate with each segment.

The Fine Line Between Using AI To Help Employees Vs. Creating Mistrust

Marketers can best draw a line between using AI to help employees versus creating mistrust among their customer base by highlighting that AI is most successful when it’s used for augmentation, not replacement. AI is best used to enhance human capabilities, not eliminate humans altogether. When companies create a culture of collaboration between employees and AI and provide proper training, they can leverage the strength of both to foster innovation and success.

Michelle Tilton is VP of Marketing at Gryphon.ai, an AI platform designed to deliver enterprise solutions for call center compliance, real-time conversation intelligence and call sentiment analysis.

The post What Marketers Must Consider When Balancing AI Innovation With Buyer Trust appeared first on Demand Gen Report.