How to AB Test Landing Pages in Marketo

Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo P a g e | 1
How to AB Test Landing Pages
© 2013. Josh Hill. Licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike with Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Visit http://www.marketingrockstarguides.com for more on marketing automation.
Marketing Rockstar’s Guide to Marketo

At a Glance
Overview
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How to AB Test Landing Pages in Marketo
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Reporting on AB Testing
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Chapter Review
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Recommended Resources
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Overview
Marketers are now expected to test web pages as a matter of course. Testing pages, however, often requires special
configuration of websites to properly handle rotation and tracking of options. One of the reasons you selected
Marketo is the system natively handles landing page testing using a feature called Testing Group.
Unlike Marketo emails, AB testing is native to the landing page system. You can create Test Groups in Design
Studio or in a Program.
What I talk about when I talk about AB testing
In case you skipped the section on Email AB Testing, here’s an overview. Feel free to skip this section and move on
to the juicy core of getting it done in Marketo.
While I hear much talk about performing AB testing by marketers, not as many of us are doing these tests back at
the office. Let’s change that right now, with this chapter. First, let’s review what AB testing is.
AB Testing of Landing Pages:
1. The comparison of two or more pages that are randomly shown to visitors with the goal of discovering which
page has more conversions (form fill outs or purchases).
2. The system designed to build, attract, and report on emails and pages.
In a complete testing system, you can AB test the email, the page, and the thank you page. Some marketers
recommend an additional offer on the final page. The best follow up offers tend to be a demo or additional content
sign ups, but could also be upsells for other products.

Just so we are on the same page, here are three complete emails to thank you page workflows to help you visualize
what we will build in this chapter. Earlier, we learned how to setup Emails for AB testing, so now we can test just
the email as in Figure 1.
Figure 1. An Email AB Test to a Single Page Offer

If desired, we can also test the Landing Page using a new concept: the Marketo Landing Page Test Group. Both
emails will use the same URL, but Marketo will randomly show one page or the other regardless of which email was
received.
Figure 2. Email AB Test to a Single URL with an AB Landing Page Test.

Finally we can test all three content pieces: Email, Landing Page, and Follow Up page to see which one was better
in comparison. This is a complex report and requires a larger sample size to ensure statistical significance. You may
want to compare groups of leads rather than the emails in this situation, so replace “Email A” with “Group A” and
“Group B” and send both groups the same email.
Figure 3. Email AB Test against a single Page URL with an AB Test and a Thank You Page AB Test.
Like Email AB testing, landing page testing can become highly complex if you try too much at one time. Since there
are so many other resources out there, I will focus on how to setup the test inside Marketo for a single AB Page Test.

Key AB Testing Concepts
Part of AB Testing is to get the setup right so your test is statistically valid. We covered much of the details in the
Email AB Test Chapter, so here’s a quick overview.
Test the Null Hypothesis, which is always that there is no difference between Conversion rate for the Control (A)
and the Experiment (B).
A: Control: this is the original page. You may already have data on it too.
B: Experiment or Test: this is the new design with a single change to make it different than the Control. For a
landing page, you will want to clone a first, and then make a single change on B.
Which Parts of a Page Should I Test?
To test a page properly, you can only make one change on the B page. Here are a few suggestions.
What to Test Landing Page
Attributes
Random Samples of a Single Group who come to the Page URL
Headline The big headline that says it all, or should.
Bullets vs. Paragraphs Bulleted lists or real text paragraphs?
Form Length Progressive or Fixed? Number of fields or which fields? Choose wisely.
Salutation Personalization Types
(PURLs)
You can personalize and use dynamic content. More on this later.
Offer What is your offer? White Paper? Free Trial?
Sub-headline Sometimes a sub-header is useful above the Form or below the Headline.
Photos For events, photos of speakers with names, titles, and bios can help.
New vs. Old Design Thinking of a new design, but not sure? Let your audience decide for you.
Fonts Sometimes fonts do matter. If you do use multiple fonts on a page, change one
of them at a time.
CTA Copy What is the CTA on the Submit Button? Can also have a CTA above the Form.
CTA Color or Size Button color does make a difference. So do size of other CTAs
CTA Placement The placement of a text CTA can help or hurt. Usually this goes above the
Form.
Bios of People Add bios or remove them.
Length of Text Is your page wordy? The long sales letter does work in many situations.

How to AB Test Landing Pages in Marketo
Ok, let’s get to it! In this example, I will test Page A against Page B with one difference: Page B will not have a
100% guarantee offer. I want to see if people will buy my Marketo Guide with or without a 100% money back
guarantee. May the best page win!
Step 1: Create a Page
You need an existing page or create a new page. Let’s call this one Marketo Guide Buy Page –
A.

Step 2: Place the offer in Page A
I’m only using text links here. I could use two buttons or even a form.

Step 3: Convert to a Test Group
Use the Landing Page Actions menu to Convert to Test Group. The following dialog will
appear. Press Convert.
The Test Group will take the original page A URL and the original page a name.

Step 4: Clone Page A to Create Page B
Typically you will want to Clone Page A to create a Page B. Doing so will ensure you have an exact
replica to adjust. The difficulty is cloning a Test Group Page drops Page B outside the Test Group!
The new Page B has its own URL, but that doesn’t matter so much right now.

Step 5: Edit Page B’s Offer
Here I remove the 100% guarantee offer. That’s it.

Step 6: Add Page B to Test Group
To add the cloned Page B to the Test Group, go to the Test Group.
Menu: Test Group Actions > Edit Group Members
Use the arrows to move the available page(s) to the Tested Landing Pages box.
Note: only unapproved
pages can be added to a
Test Group.

Step 7: Approve the AB Pages
You can approve or unapprove individual pages inside the Test Group by selecting them and using the
Tested Page Actions menu. If you go to the Approved Page’s URL, you will see the page with
the actual URL.

Step 8: Approve the Test Group
In order for the Test Group URL and AB Testing functions to work, you also need to Approve the Test
Group: Test Group Actions > Approve Test Group.

Step 9: Test out the Test Group URL
This is the URL you will use in an email, link, etc.

Step 10: View the pages as your Leads will see them

Step 11: Optional: add a third page, C with a new change
In page C, I will test a Form against no form, depending on who wins: A or B.

This is how Page C will look inside the Test Group:
Reporting on AB Testing
Now that we have a couple of pages out in the wild, we can report on our success. There are three ways to do this:
Test Group Summary; Smart Lists; or Landing Page Reports.

Landing Page Test Group Summary
This is the easiest method. Simply click on the Landing Page Test Group. Marketo will show you the Views,
Conversions, and Conversion% for all pages within the Group.

You can adjust the Report Settings time period as well.
Smart Lists
Using Smart Lists for AB testing may not be as helpful for straight conversion data. You can use the various filters
to bring up lists of Leads who filled out either page or even visited the page. This data can be used to better
determine who is reacting to each offer.
You might consider using the Lead Performance Report and a Smart List constraint as well.

Landing Page Reports
The Landing Page Report is essentially the same as the Test Group Summary as they work off the same function.
Step 1: Go to Analytics
Step 2: Clone the Landing Page Report
Step 3: Adjust the Setup Time Period

Step 4: Select the Page Groups to Report on
Step 5: Press Report
This report will now show you the coveted conversion% as well as the number of New Names
acquired by Marketo via these pages.

Chapter Review
Self-Quiz
How do you create an Landing Page Test Group?
How do you add pages to a Test Group?
You should change at least two items on every page: T/F?
Recommended Resources
Marketo Documentation
Landing Page Optimization Cheat Sheet
Landing Page Glossary
Creating a New Landing Page Template
Editing Landing Page Templates
Example Landing Page Template

Marketo Community
Referencing Marketo Pages or Website pages in Marketo
AB Testing with the Stars – Summit 2012
Tools
Optimizely
Google Website Optimizer (Experiments) – part of Analytics
Yottaa
Unbounce
Experts
Real Life CTA Examples - HubSpot
Which Test Won | Case Studies | Tech Guide
Increase Conversion Rates - Mixergy
Marketing Sherpa

How to AB Test Landing Pages in Marketo

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