Edging back off the cliff, attached to a climbing anchor by a “rope” barely thicker than a shoe lace, I yell up: “Hey Dario, this rope’s been tested, right?” I realized immediately that I’m asking the question too late. Much better to know before my life depended on it!
At Datacap, our quality assurance (QA) department is responsible for making sure our software goes out the door in working order. When all is well, document capture systems transform reams of paper into manageable data with minimal human intervention. Our product and professional services groups lean heavily on our QA team to make sure no one goes off the cliff unprotected! QA won’t find every possible problem, particularly things that only show up in a customer environment, but they offer a very valuable “second set of eyes” on our technical handiwork.
It turns out that the culture of producing, and then testing the product works effectively in marketing as well. Although I know what marketing communications are effective on me – when I’m replacing my smart phone or finding a 3 hour car rental in New York City – I have to guess what will work for someone looking to automate medical claims or invoice data entry. However clever or innovative we think our communications are, we really don’t know how well they cut through the competing noise until they go out the door… and we get responses… or no responses! But since no one has to go off a cliff to find out, it is safe and easy to test a marketing initiative with no broken bones.
With the advent of digital marketing, test marketing can happen very fast. A morning email campaign to hundreds or thousands of claims managers delivers results by the end of the day. That’s because it is all happening in Internet time. Most of the emails are received within minutes, and many people, if they are going to read them at all, will open them that day. And we know that if they don’t follow a link in the email when it is first opened, they aren’t very likely to come back to the email to give it another shot.
So testing is king here in Datacap marketing – regardless of how clever or witty we think an email subject line is, if the recipients aren’t opening it, we move on and try something new. It helps us with fashioning a message that is relevant and gets the response that we need to justify the effort. Once the curiosity of a prospect has been piqued enough to get them to click on a link, the next challenge is to get them to tell us who they are when they arrive on a “landing page” (the web page they were sent to via the email link).
The landing page for invoice capture below is the result of many tests, both successful and not so successful. It has evolved through tests of which pages and offers attract visitors to share their contact information. When they do, we are clearly offering something of value to that person.
With this landing page – and the testing that went into its evolution – I have a lot of confidence as I step off the cliff with each new marketing campaign. The content is highly relevant because we know that many people have already looked at it, liked it, and found it useful. So, just like Dario said to me, “Don’t worry – lean back and relax, it’s all been tested already!”
