High school students everywhere loathe it. College students loathe it even more.

But alas, testing is part of life…and if we allow it to be, it’s actually a pretty awesome part (well, perhaps more awesome for marketers than for college kids).

And while standardized testing and direct mail testing aren’t quite the same, their purpose is. At its core, testing goes a long way in telling us our strengths, our weaknesses. It reveals things that we may not otherwise have known and challenges the things that we thought we knew.

Sure, it would be easier (and certainly less time-consuming) to stick with a proven direct mail package. But smart marketers know that testing is crucial. Not only can it improve the bottom line, but it can also save a lot of money.

So when it comes to testing, let me share some rules of the road:

• Rule #1: Be proactive. Your audience is constantly growing and changing, and what worked last year—even last month—may not work today. So don’t wait until your control suddenly stops performing to test. Think about it this way: when you notice that your car is making a funny noise, you don’t wait to bring it to the shop until you’re broken down on the side of the road. You bring it in for maintenance. So before your #10 window package starts to fatigue, try an A/B split. Consider sending your standard kit to half your file, and testing a highly personalized self-mailer to the other half.

• Rule #2: Don’t just throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping that something will stick. Test meaningful things. Test your list, test your offer, test different stocks and finishes, test the shape and size and colors—all things that may move the needle. If you’re thinking about changing the font size from 14 point to 13.87596, fine, just know that you’re wasting valuable time and money.

• Rule #3: Allow no sacred cows. Mind you, this is a rule I’ve shared before, but its importance can’t be overstated. Prior to my days at Polaris Direct, I once had a client who mailed a monthly “magazine” to its donor file. Despite the fact that people liked the magazine, no one responded to it. The organization was throwing away thousands upon thousands of dollars every month. When asked why they continued to mail it, the organization said, “We’ve always done it.” If you’re mailing a package just because you’ve always mailed it, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

• Rule #4: Learn to be okay with failure. Not every test will work—and that’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. Every time a test fails, you learn something new about your customer-base—what they like, what they dislike, what they respond to, what they ignore. And that means you can deliver better, more relevant mail in the future.

And while these four rules may only scratch the surface when it comes to direct mail testing, I’ll leave you with one last thought: the only way to improve results is to test, measure, and know. So before rolling out a new package to a million people, test it first. Then test it again, and again, until you’ve proven that it’s a winner. Then mail it to the million people on your list.

If you need help with your testing strategy, contact our Strategic Marketing Services team today.

About the author: Melanie Gray is Creative Supervisor/Copywriter at Polaris Direct, a nationally acclaimed high-volume direct marketing services company in Hooksett, NH.