Beat Your Control by Testing the Big Things

Written By Ted Grigg

When you test direct mail, for example, test the big things rather than tweaks.

“Tweak testing” pervades the risk adverse environments in many industries. This dramatically reduces their chances of competing with those firms that understand the need to compete aggressively with their testing programs.

Why? Because breakthroughs of 25% plus in costs per sale that displace controls do not happen with small changes. Big changes in results require big differences in your package tests.

The testing priorities are clear. The priority sequence is as follows.

1. The list

2. The offer

3. The format

4. The main selling proposition

DMCG Results

So don’t try to structure the test so that you are testing paper stocks, envelope sizes, first class versus 3rd class and so forth. These all impact response to some degree, but by the time you figure it all out everything will have changed. So concentrate on the majors.

Besides, you have limited staff resources for analyzing test results as well as fixed test budgets. Spend your assets on the things that make a significant difference.

When testing offers, don’t try to make the two packages by forcing the same package contents or format. Test packages, not package elements.Every package possesses its own unique character. After all, you are looking for a breakthrough, not an analytical report that has too many variables to make sense out of anyway.

So in direct mail, test packages against each other and not package elements against each other. Your chances of beating your controls are greatly enhanced through this approach.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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