Although A/B testing is a marketing given, marketers often unknowingly limit their potential response results with preconceived notions about what audiences prefer. Approaching A/B testing with an open mind can yield the surprise wins that create market leaders. A recent DirectMarketingIQ article by Rohan Ayyar, of the E2M digital marketing agency, cited some telling A/B testing results for marketing efforts as diverse as mobile landing pages, e-mail subject lines and even product design. One example of a surprise test win comes from health insurer Anthem. For a mobile PPC campaign, Anthem A/B tested a landing page with no images and three different calls to action in a text-only format against a landing page with the image of a smiling woman, a single call to action and descriptive copy. Based on common assumptions about the digital conversion power of images, Anthem expected the version with the image to win--but they were wrong. On a mobile platform, the all-text version increased leads by 166% at a 95% confidence level. It turned out that mobile users scrolling small screens preferred multiple calls to action, including an easy call to customer care, to reading small soft-sell text. Another famous example of thinking out of the A/B testing box comes from President Obama's 2012 re-election e-mail fundraising. Politics is serious business, so the assumption was that e-mail appeals with formal subject lines would deliver more dollars. In reality, casual subject lines that even contained mild profanity ("Hell yeah, I Like Obama") or just the recipient's name did better, and the big winner was the famous "Hey" subject line series. The President's name as the sender combined with a friendly personal approach in the subject line to push winning e-mails $2.2 million ahead in revenue compared with the worst performing e-mail. For more on surprise A/B testing wins, see http://www.directmarketingiq.com/article/3-unexpected-wins-that-emerged-from-a-b-testing/1
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