4. You can make data-driven decisions.

Why wonder and guess when you can be sure of what you know? Split testing provides the kind of data-driven certainty that helps you make informed decisions, because numbers don’t lie.

5. Your potential customers will benefit from a better user experience.

If we use split-test data to better understand our target audience, you can easily give your potential customers what they want, strengthening relationships and making their experience more user-friendly and enjoyable. A/B testing ultimately helps to build customer loyalty, strengthen your brand’s reputation and attract more customers.

6. It’s profitable.

In sales, optimization is paramount, and split testing is a very cost-effective way to gather more useful data about your sales or marketing approach. The calculation is simple: you can use A/B testing to determine whether or not the changes are right for you, before making larger investments. In the long term, split testing saves a great deal of time and money.

Now that you know why you should do split testing, here’s a list of things you can test.

What can you A/B test?

In sales, there are many ways to optimize performance and increase conversions. Here is the complete list:

1. Sending e-mails (subject line, body text, CTA)
2. LinkedIn prospecting (connection request, LinkedIn message, InMail – subject, message, personalization)
3. Pricing strategies (different pricing models or discount offers)
4. Product presentations and demonstrations (presentation style, product demonstration tactics)
5. Value propositions (different formulations, product presentation, service value propositions)
6. Bundles (combinations of product or service bundles)
7. Social proof and testimonials
8. Up-selling and cross-selling techniques

How to carry out A/B tests

Split testing sounds good now, doesn’t it? Want to use it right away? Here’s how to do it, step by step

A/B testing – 6 general steps

1. Identify objectives

Conversion targets are the most important measure to take into account when planning a split test. They should be sufficient to help you determine whether the variant (or option B) is better than the original. These objectives can be link clicks, call bookings or product purchases.

2. Gathering data

Some prospecting tools often provide an overview of the areas you can and should optimize. This enables you to collect data more quickly and identify areas for improvement.

3. Determine which part of the prospecting process you wish to A/B test

By examining the indicators, you can easily find parts of your sales process that should be A/B tested. For example, a poor open rate often leads to a poor response rate. For example, a poor open rate often implies a poorly-written subject line. To start, choose an indicator, find something that causes it and test it.

4. Create test variants

With split testing, you can use specialized software to make the desired changes to any element you wish to test. This could mean creating a different version of your LinkedIn invitation to connect message, a different email subject line or something else entirely.

5. Divide your sample audience

Once you’ve created one or more test variants, you need to split the audience sample in two (or more, if there are more variants) and decide who will see variant A and who will see variant B (or more) of your split-test experiment. Some tools, like LeadIn, usually do this for you randomly and evenly to ensure a fair comparison result.

6. Execute, analyze and optimize

Once you’ve launched the split test, all you have to do is track and measure the results of each version you’ve created. You can, of course, use tools to track conversion rates and overall engagement indicators, for further study and optimization.

The final step in split testing is to analyze the results of your experiment. Now all you have to do is decide which version to adopt. Nothing could be simpler.

How do you test the different parts of the sales process?

Salespeople involved in prospecting use A/B testing to determine whether their prospecting efforts are recognized by prospects or not. You can use these tests for several parts of your sales process. These can include testing sales emails and subject lines, product presentations and demos, follow-up strategies and customer segmentation. Let’s take a look at some of these in detail.

A/B prospecting tests

Email prospecting

These days, prospecting has mainly shifted to digital. If we use the e-mail as a starting point for split testing, we can test several elements of our cold e-mail. For example, if prospecting isn’t yielding enough results, such as opening rates, we should use split testing to try out different variants of our subject line. If the number of clicks on the links is insufficient, we should consider testing the CTA that leads to that link, or the body of the e-mail, and so on.

To summarize, in the context of e-mail prospecting, we can test

1. Subject lines – Creating a catchy subject line is what makes or breaks your open rates. A/B testing is the ideal way to determine what works and what doesn’t for your sample audience. When testing object lines, make sure you test only that and no other element. LeadIn lets you test up to 5 different variants at a time.
2. The body of the e-mail – If your subject line attracts attention, but people aren’t really responding to your e-mail the way you want them to, the element you should test fractionally is the body of the e-mail. Use the same subject line and CTA, but modify the content and determine the tone that best suits your target group. You can experiment with different lengths, the use of emojis, writing styles and more.
3. CTA – Your audience responds to clear instructions. The call to action must therefore be the last thing they read and the first thing they do. If you think the call to action is the problem with your sales emails, you should write a few variations and test just the call to action element to find out what works best for your niche audience.
4. Personalization (images and GIFs) – These days, people don’t just focus on text. But if you add visual elements, it’s a different story. In fact, we’ve tested it extensively and learned that adding personalized images, GIFs and even videos to your e-mail prospecting campaign can increase response rates significantly – by up to 63%! If you know this element works well in cold prospecting, you should run A/B tests to determine what works best for each audience segment.

Prospecting on LinkedIn

In recent years, sales prospecting has gone digital, and what better place to find potential prospects than LinkedIn – a professional social media platform with nearly a billion users and 63 million decision-makers? If you narrow your audience down to a smaller sample, you can use split testing to determine which social selling techniques work best for your LinkedIn prospecting efforts.

With the help of an automation tool, you can make the A/B testing process much easier. What’s more, if the tool has excellent statistics tracking, your analysis and final decision will be clear. And now, here are all the things you can split-test when it comes to LinkedIn.

1. Connection requests – This is your opening on LinkedIn, and it needs to be short enough to keep their attention, but also important enough to inspire an immediate response. It can be difficult to find the right note, especially with a cold approach. This is where split tests come in handy, as they make it easy to determine your opening approach. You can try sending blank, personalized or generic invitations to connect. You can even try out contact templates if you’re new to A/B testing, and use them as a starting point.

2. LinkedIn messages – Once you’ve established a connection with your prospect, your follow-up message on LinkedIn needs to keep their attention throughout the conversation and inspire them to take action. It could be an appointment, a demonstration, a call or a click on a link. Experiment with tone, length and emojis; again, make sure you don’t change everything at once.

3. InMails – When it comes to people who seem out of your reach on LinkedIn (i.e. not a second or third connection), InMail messages are there to help make that connection. Being off the grid doesn’t mean being out of range. But certainly, if a complete stranger approaches you or, in this case, sends you an InMail message out of the blue, you’re bound to wonder why this person is contacting me. Of course, split testing is there to help you determine which subject line or message works best for this type of connection attempt.

4. Personalization – As with email, personalization on LinkedIn, where everyone is busy and inboxes are flooded with all kinds of requests (especially in the case of decision-makers), can set you apart from your competitors. Using images, GIFs and videos can help turn prospects into customers in no time! We know – we did the tests ourselves! Here again, you can use LeadIn to test which visual elements make your target audience more receptive to your sales pitch.

Now that you know where and what to test, the question is which tool to use. We’ve been hinting at it all along, but yes, you can use LeadIn, a LinkedIn automation and cold email software that offers A/B testing functionality. You can use it to test different elements, such as the logo, the company name, etc. You can use it to test different elements of your email and LinkedIn prospecting campaign.

1. To get started, create your prospecting campaign.