A/B email copy testing for Walmart

During my time as Copy Lead at growth marketing agency Ladder.io, one of the clients I led on as part of the creative team was Walmart. More specifically, the brand’s new (at the time) app, Text to Shop. The project team consisted of myself as Copy Lead, a brilliant Senior Copywriter from my team and two dedicated designers.

The Text to Shop app is designed to streamline and simplify the shopping experience for its customers by providing a text-based shopping service whereby the customer can text what they need and go pick up their goods in-store.

Over a number of months, we ran an extensive series of paid media tests (Meta, YouTube) and email marketing tests with the goal of increasing enrollments to the Text to Shop app.

Here, I shine the spotlight on one particularly effective A/B email copy test we conducted to showcase that sweet spot between data-based performance and tonal personality when writing creative conversion copy:

Key results

• Unique open rate: 37% > 42%

• Clicks: 56 > 71

• Click to open: 0.87% > 0.97%

• Enrollments: 13 > 24

So, through a series of super strategic copy adjustments between a Control email and a Variant, we managed to increase unique open rates by almost 13% for the client and boosted enrollments to the app by 85%.

Keep scrolling to find out how we did it.

It’s important to note here that the design aspects of the creatives were kept the same across the Control (left) and the Variant (right), apart from some updates to the products shown in the app UI visuals. This was to ensure that the results of the copy-led A/B test weren’t diluted by any other influential variables (e.g. a different header image or different colour CTA buttons).

We also kept the subject line and preheader text the same for Control and Variant for this test as we wanted to test only the email body. The idea here was to assess the effectiveness of the overall message and drive more engagement by challenging the current click-through rate benchmark against the control variable.

Meet our target persona, Taylor

I think now would be the perfect time to introduce Taylor.

Taylor was the customer persona we were working with for Text to Shop. She is a female, living in the US; probably employed, mum of at least one child and most of all, extremely busy. She is the one who does all the grocery shopping but feels easily overwhelmed by the endless lists, numerous trips to the store and often forgets items in the process.

What invaluable KSP does Text to Shop offer Taylor? Time. More time. Quality time. Family time. Time to herself. How? By making it easy to order new items and reorder her regulars quickly and simply via text.

Crafting our Variant copy

Personalisation

One of the main shifts we wanted to implement was putting the focus back on the (target) customer (Taylor), her pain points and how the product can solve her problems.

We first did this in the headline segment of the email, transitioning from H1 copy ‘Your personalised shopping assistant’ to ‘Your favorites. At your fingertips.’. One of the app’s main USPs is personalisation and order recall, so it made sense that its communications felt personal too.

Simplification

As part of the headline Variant updates, we also streamlined and simplified the H2 copy to get to the point much quicker and added a more direct call-to-action, transitioning from ‘Here’s our number’ to ‘Sign up for free’.

Taylor is busy, remember. She hasn’t got time to read long sentences or decipher cryptic CTAs. We needed to give her the key information and clear instructions - and faster.

Tone fine-tune-ification

Throughout the entire Variant email we made sure the tone felt informative and conversational in equal measure. The Control copy was more biased toward the former and we wanted Taylor to feel like she was receiving a message from a friend - somebody she could trust and somebody there to take all her worries away.

We did this by subtly weaving in words specifically designed to put a smile on Taylor’s face and to plant that seed of trust in the Text to Shop brand.

Describing reordering from a personalised purchase history as ‘Easy as (lemon meringue) pie’ right next to the UI visual of a lemon meringue being ordered in the app was just the right amount of… zest (not sorry).

A sense of CTA urgency

Finally, we audited the copy on all of the Control email’s CTA buttons and decided to try CTAs that were more direct in the Variant.

‘Give it a try’ became ‘Sign up for free’.

‘Get must-haves in a tap’ became ‘Try it now’.

And ‘Text for your favorites’ became ‘Join in one minute’ to show busy Taylor just how quick, easy and painless enrolling would be.

So, that’s how we achieved our goal of increasing Text to Shop app enrollments - and by over 50% at that.

Want to learn more about how I could help you power-up your performance using strategic copywriting alone? Just say the word.