Your Startup Needs a Dedicated Test Budget
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" doesn't apply to growth marketing.
Marketers, How Valid Is Your Test? Hint: It’s Not About the Sample Size
The validity of a test is not tied to the size of the sample itself, but rather to the number of responses that you get from that sample. Choose sample [...]
Consumer Marketers, Looking to Test New Data Categories? Try These
We are all trying to create and sustain customers, using data to discover new patterns, new audiences, and new prospects — and that requires a lot of testing, and innovative [...]
Toasting 2018 Silver Apple Honorees: In Their Words
You might have heard of a big event that happened last week in the USA. No, not THAT one. I’m talking about but the presentation of the Direct Marketing Club [...]
3 DRTV Testing Tips for Digital Marketers
Lately, I have been talking to several marketers that want to test direct response television advertising for their brands. Interestingly, these companies that want to test DRTV are category disruptors, [...]
Implement DevOps to Improve CX
There’s been a movement in IT during the past seven or so years to adopt a DevOps methodology; whereby, developers and operations are working together to deliver sound secure code [...]
Testing: Sometimes, the Little Things Count
We’re always seeking new approaches to achieve breakthrough results in direct response marketing, and sometimes we get a big win with a bold new concept. But while you’re on the [...]
Embrace Failure to Achieve Success
Too many marketers fear failure instead of embracing it. They fear that reporting poor results will be viewed as poor management. Instead, they should be positioning their results as learnings. [...]
My Best Short-List of Digital Sales Prospecting Tools
What tools do most of my best (most productive) students use when prospecting? Glad you asked. Here's the skinny on “top picks” that have been crash-tested by me, my team [...]
How Not to Be a Tone-Deaf Brand
Pepsi is clearly not the only brand to take a wrong turn in their ads or other communications. A few recent examples include Match.com, Nivea, and most recently, United Airlines. [...]
Hype or Opportunity?
Marketers today face the huge challenge of creating the right program mix to meet their brand objectives. It’s difficult to balance the risk of new investments against the budget support [...]
Top 3 Questions I Hear About Direct Marketing
Clients and friends who are traditional marketers often seek my advice on direct response. Here are the answers to the three questions I hear most frequently:
How Do You Decide What to Test in Direct Mail?
Do you have three tested direct mail packages waiting in the wings to use when your control starts to fatigue? If you don’t, you should. It’s never a question of [...]
Direct-Mail Testing Upended With Bayesian Analytics
Direct-mail marketers have relied on either A/B testing or multivariate testing to evaluate winning campaigns for generations. Those evaluations, unfortunately, weren’t always based on statistics, but on educated guesses or [...]
Rather Test or Guess?
“Make me a deal on a split run.” Of all the negotiating ploys we as marketers might consider, this simple sentence has more success-seeds than any of the fustian and [...]