I have, sitting on my desk, four pieces of unsolicited bulk mail. All of these are from the same company. All of them offer to reduce my mortgage payments by going through their quick refinance service. I’m quite dubious to their claims and will shred them as soon as I finish writing this.
What caught my eye was that even though all the offers are identical, almost down to the exact wording, they all took different forms and had different appearances when still in their envelopes:
- One looked like a bank statement
- One looked like a check
- One looked like an appointment notice from the VA Medical Center
- One looked like “junk mail.”
Of course, it’s very easy to tell without opening that these are all junk. I open them so I can shred the parts on which my personal information is printed. What prompted me to comment was that they all had the same web site address and toll-free number printed on them.
You’d think a company who went through the trouble of creating four different forms for the same offer would have split-tested them. They could have a unique toll-free number and URL for each of the four formats. Then they could quickly learn which one generated the most calls or web traffic and then use it more than the others.
You might hear this practice called “A/B Testing.” Many e-commerce companies employ such methods to find out which versions of banner ads and landing pages produce the desired result. It works quite well in helping get a message to the right audience.
What is old is new again. Well, off to the shredder.
photo credit: StarsApart
