The How, What, and Why of Testing for Agile Marketers | ClickZ.

InA Day in the Life of an Agile Marketer, we presented to you a vision of the perfect agile marketer, Melanie, as she went through her day.

This perfect world vision may have made you a little sick. Who really works in a marketing environment like that?

You don’t have to become this kind of über agile marketer overnight. You can “plug in” at any of several places. Testing is one place that touches on many of the agile marketer’s practices including measurement, content development, and goal setting. I asked Rose Holston ofAviso Communicationsto answer some of the main questions marketers have when starting down the path toward implementing an agile online testing program.

Testing is the single most important skill you’ll develop as an agile marketer.

Testing is not hard. Becoming a testing organization is. The act of setting up a simple test requires you to increase your proficiency in a number of areas; proficiencies that are crucial for progressive, data-driven marketing. For example, managing the IT department is an important proficiency.

To be successful, you need a plan. To execute that plan, every decision should be backed up with quantitative results that help evolve the plan. The more specific you get about the outcome you are trying to affect, the more you will learn from testing. There are three basic questions to be addressed.

1. Why will we test?
2. What do we test?
3. How do we test it?

Why Will I Test?

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