My Ideal A/B Test (That I Can’t Run But You Can)

If you were ever to stop by the FranchiseHelp office for a few hours, there’s a near certainty that you’d get to participate in one of our favorite debates: phone vs. email.

It seems that a day doesn’t go by that two of us aren't vigorously arguing the merits of each, comparing and contrasting strategies that pit these two forms of communication against each other.

(I understand that there are probably less nerdy things to debate, but such is life in Franchise Lead Generation. Someone’s gotta do it!)

The primary argument on the side of email is that people are way more willing to give out their email address than their phone number, and you can send out mass emails instead of needing one-to-one communication. On the opposite, phone calls are heralded as a way more effective and efficient form of moving people down funnel toward opening a franchise. The old, “There’s no substitute for an actual conversation.”

Ultimately, the status of this argument will dictate a lot of the different strategies that we work on for generating leads. Sometimes we’ll double down on the email world, while other times we’ll work on capturing phone numbers.

Here’s the ultimate issue. As it stands now, our leads are guaranteed to include both an email address and phone number. So as much as we discuss the either/or situation, we’re limited by the fact that in the end, we need both.

Franchises, on the other hand, are not limited.

I really want to run a test that compares forms that toggle the requirements of each of these pieces of information.

This table lays out the four different options, with my hypothesis about what each permutation would mean for performance:

(Ultimately, it’s unlikely that you’d ever run a test that allows both fields to be optional, but you never know!)

I’m pretty confident in the directionality of my hypotheses, but the actual quantification of the results could mean a big deal for a franchise. One of these four options is likely to significantly outperform the other three, and I would love to know which one it is.

(If any of the readers ever decide to run this test, you HAVE to let me know the results.)

The fact of the matter is the simple requirement of a form field can have a great deal of impact on a franchise sales process. The completion of a contact form is a point of high leverage during the process i.e. there is going to be a high likelihood that someone drops out of the process at this point. (I would add filling out a financial questionnaire and discovery days as other points of high leverage during the process, although I would also argue that filling out the form is more important.)

It only takes small tweaks at points of high leverage to make a big impact.

So go run this test! And when you get these results, make sure you let me know.

If you need help with setting up and running A/B tests, check out this article or shoot us a note!