Are You a Copywriting Hotshot? Test

The deadline for this contest has closed, but stay tuned for a post in early January announcing the winners of the split test!

Picture this. Sonia Simone and me in an advertising agency conference room.

She pitches her headline to the account executive.

I pitch mine …

… and promptly get blown out of the water. It doesn’t matter which headline is better. Sonia is a legend. So the account executive goes with the better copywriter, not the better headline, 10 times out of 10.

So let’s try scenario B …

This time, we don’t ask the account exec’s opinion on which headline is better. (Steaks-and-strategy sessions with the client aside, he doesn’t know anyway.)

This time, after Sonia presents her headline, I whip off one of the dainty white gloves I’m prone to wear, slap her across the face, and say, “Madame, I demand satisfaction! I challenge you to a duel!”

When you don’t know the answer, let the customer decide

I wouldn’t let Sonia choose pistols at dawn. Instead, our weapon would be a split test.

Half of prospective customers would be exposed to Sonia’s headline and half to mine. And then we’d see, under real-world conditions where customers don’t even know they’re making a choice, which headline was really more effective.

On the surface of it, testing your copy seems like a great way to improve conversion and learn more about your customers. And it is. As Brian Clark says, “Conversion optimization is the coolest thing.”

But beyond the customer, think how A/B testing can help you

As a writer, I pride myself on my pitching ability.

But … I still hate pitching. At heart, I’m a writer, not a salesman.

So, imagine, if instead of having to pitch and convince the account executive or the client why your headline is better than the jargon-filled, scalable-automated-solution they normally prefer … you could just show them.

Let us show you how it’s done …

Give us your best subject line for a chance to win a ticket to Email Summit 2014 (plus hotel)

To give you a real example of A/B testing you can participate in, and test your copywriting mettle, I’m not going to challenge Sonia to a duel.

I’m challenging you.

To be more specific, Copyblogger and MarketingExperiments are pitting our audiences against each other for an A/B testing duel.

If you scroll down, you’ll see the exact copy of an email we are going to send promoting MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Las Vegas.

We’re asking you to write the best subject line you can think of, and leave it as a comment for this blog post.

Then Sonia and the Copyblogger team will read each and every comment and hand-pick the five subject lines they think will perform best. We’ll pick five subject lines from the MarketingExperiments blog as well (you can see the blog post announcing this contest to our audience here).

We’ll then run all 10 of those subject lines in a split test.

The writer of the subject line that generates the largest number of unique clickthroughs will receive a complimentary ticket to Email Summit 2014. We’ll even put you up in the host hotel, the Aria resort, for two nights.

The writer of the subject line that gets the highest open rate (clickthrough rate is our primary KPI, or key performance indicator, but opens will be a secondary KP

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