Getting your law firm’s marketing message just right can help boost conversion rates and positively impact your profits. One tactic used to maximize conversion rates for marketing campaigns is A/B split testing. At Smokeball, we find it important to try different marketing strategies to understand what works.

What Is A/B Split Testing?

Split testing is when you compare the effectiveness of one object (i.e. an email message, marketing copy, video etc.) against a variant of that object. When you’re comparing only two objects, it’s called A/B split testing.

Why Should Law Firms Use Split Testing?

If used correctly, A/B split testing can help a law firm increase the number of people opening an email, clicking on a link, reading a newsletter or answering a call to action. The results of an A/B split test will let you know what elements in your marketing campaign are most effective in getting the results you want.

How Can A Law Firm Split Test Marketing Campaigns?

There are a few important steps in setting up an effective split test that will deliver accurate and useful results.

• Choose a single marketing campaign element for your test. For example, you might choose to test an email or test a landing page. You don’t want to test all the elements of entire campaign at the same time because you won’t be able to tell which elements are having the most impact, this is why testing each element separately is important.
• Make a single change on the “variant” copy. For example, if you’re testing an email message, you might change only the subject line on the “B” copy to determine which version is most effective. You can run several tests on the same email, separately changing various elements such as the subject line, opening paragraph, and call to action.
• Find a large test audience. If you already have a large list of contacts with at least a few hundred people on it, you will have a large enough audience for your test.  You can segment your list—sending out the “A” version of your marketing material to one segment and the “B” version of the marketing material to your other segment.  And in most email list software such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, you can track who opened what emails so you can see at-a-glance which version got the most clicks or opens. This same method can be applied to web content, you’ll just need to find a way to send enough traffic the “A” and “B” versions of the marketing content.

Give It Time

An effective A/B split test can’t be done overnight. You need to reach enough people with your content before you can get measurable outcomes that aren’t just the result of luck or coincidence. A good A/B test should include at least 100 people who have engaged with the content—the more the better. And engagement means actually opening the email or clicking on a link—not just views.  Depending on the size of your contact list or website traffic it could take a few weeks or more to get this right amount of engagement on your test content.

Always Test Your Marketing

Split testing isn’t something that begins and ends with one single marketing campaign, it’s something that is ongoing. If you are consistently sending out marketing content such as emails, newsletters, and/or driving traffic to your landing pages, continue A/B split testing on elements that you suspect may be impacting your conversion rate.  Incremental improvements in your conversion rates over time add up to huge additions to your bottom-line.

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Lynn Luong is the Digital Marketing Manager for Smokeball, a case management software that increases productivity and efficiency for solo attorneys  and small law firms to become more profitable.  Lynn has over 8 years of experience in marketing with a focus on digital by developing successful strategies and managing many areas of marketing.