"They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano,
but When I Started to Play..."

Oops, wrong sales letter.

Actually, I want to talk about a problem you may not even know you have: slow split testing. That's right! Your Google Adwords split tests may be running much slower than necessary. So here's the obvious question: Who Cares?
 
Executive "Just Cut to the Chase" Summary for People Who Hate Long Sales Letters:

Function: Winner Alert will scour your AdWords accounts daily, perform statistical analysis on every single AB split test of your ads, and send you an email every time it discovers a Winner.

Benefit: Saves a boatload (not my first choice of words, but just in case your kids are reading over your shoulder) of time, and makes you money by allowing you to retire bad ads and improve your campaigns faster
 
Trial Subscription: $0.00 for 14 days.

Ongoing Cost: $19.95/month.

Time to Set Up: 5-10 minutes one-time setup.
 
 
You know split testing is the key to winning the AdWords game. And the faster you can split test and learn and improve, the more likely you are to become the dominant player in your market. That's why lots of traffic is better than very little traffic. That's why high CTRs are better than low CTRs - because you get more traffic to your landing page and can improve your landing page faster than your competitors.

It's a vicious or victorious cycle: the faster you split test, the faster you learn, the more improvements you make, the more traffic you get, and the faster you can split test. And the reverse is true: the slower you split test, the slower you learn, the less you improve, the less traffic you get, and the slower you can split test.

You want to test as quickly as you can. Here's the million dollar question: how do you know when your test is "done?" When can you say for sure that Ad #1's CTR of 2.6 is truly better than Ad #2's CTR of 2.3? Five clicks? 15? 30? Every click you get after the "magic one" is wasting precious time.

A short course on statistics

The answer to the question of when do you have enough data to declare a winner can be found in the zany world of inferential statistics. You see, with a small number of clicks, you're just not sure if your results are "real" or are just random chance. You need a certain number of clicks to be reasonably certain one ad is out-pulling another.

How many clicks? It depends on how big a difference between your CTRs.

So you have to input your results into a statistical package or split testing web page to find out whether to keep your test running or start a new test.

What Happens When Your AdWords Account Gets Huge?

At first, you have just a couple of ads. Split testing is fun and easy. But then, as you refine your market, enter new markets, and test new concepts, what happens? Your account grows. Lots of campaigns, lots of ad groups, lots of split tests. And now it's not so easy to remember to check them all the time.

Ten campaigns, 15 ad groups per campaign, that's 150 split tests. Some of them will be conclusive within a few hours, others will take a few months. What are you supposed to do, check each one each day?

Let's look at the steps of checking just a single split test:

  1. Open a web browser
  2. Log in to your Adwords account
  3. Click on the campaign you're interested in
  4. Click on the ad group you're interested in
  5. Scroll down or click the link to take you to the bottom of the page
  6. Compare the two ads' CTRs
  7. Write down each ad's CTR and number of clicks, and navigate to Splittester.com
  8. Enter the four numbers and click for the results
  9. If you are certain enough that you have a winner, you navigate back to Adwords
  10. Find the losing ad and click "edit"
  11. Change something about the ad
  12. Repeat the process the next time you think of it

Feel like doing that daily, for every one of your ad groups?

I didn't. So I called on my favorite programmers, Erik and Rob, and whined about how much I detested the process of split testing, and could they create something that would just let me know when one of my split tests was conclusive. And after a year and a lot of false starts, they came up with the AdWords Winner Alert Tool.

I didn't want to be selfish and keep the tool for myself alone, especially since in that scenario they would have charged me $38,000 in development costs. So I decided to be a good guy and make Winner Alert available to everybody with enough money to pry it from my greedy fingers.

Here's what Winner Alert Does (blue for features, red for benefits, green for unfounded claims):

Winner Alert sends you an email every time an Adwords split test is conclusive. You get same day, real-time notification that it's time to test a new ad against your current winner. No more loser ads sending traffic to your competitors instead of you. 
 
Bryan Todd, co-author of The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, said to me, "That's like a whistling tea kettle for your split testing." I said, "Dang, I wish I'd thought of that."
 
The email alert contains a link to a handsome web page where you can view and sort all your ads, color coded by split test status. So you only have to spend time on ads that require action.
 
 
You can see there are six different colors, corresponding to six different split test situations, corresponding to what action you need to take for each one. We even include a split test state that nobody talks about - the dead heat that goes on and on because it's just too close to call. In that case, we advise: Just pick one and move on!
 
Nowhere else do you get that kind of kick in the rear for a stalled Ad Group.  

So how much does it cost?

The Really Annoying "Value Build" Section of the Sales Letter

Assume that your time is worth $167.45 per hour, and the value of a visitor is -

On second thought, let's just skip the value build and tell you the deal:

Winner Alert is available as a subscription service for $19.95/month. That's less than half the price of a one-way advance non-refundable fare from Raleigh NC to Philadelphia on Southwest Airlines. And what are you going to do in Philadelphia that you can't do from Raleigh?


Think about the benefits of turbocharged split testing, and compare it to a measly $19.95/month. The ROI comparison should be so clear, it's a no-brainer. If you're hesitating, then Winner Alert is not for you.
 

Here's our silicon-clad guarantee: if you don't like Winner Alert, you can cancel your subscription at any time. 

And I make no promises about how long this offer will last. But the price is definitely going up, because this site is run by capitalists. And it will still be a bargain: after all, if we assume your time is worth $167.45 per hour, and the value of a visitor is...

Click here to try Winner Alert absolutely free for 14 days. 

Click here if you've decided not to give Winner Alert a try.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to dazzle my friends with my piano playing. I hope they like "Heart and Soul" as much as I do.

Sincerely,

Howie's fake signature (should be in a cursive font, but it's midnight and I'm not fooling around with fonts at this hour)

Howie Jacobson

P.S. Try Winner Alert for free here if you like this link better than the other one.

Disclaimer: This site is in no way affiliated with Google. Google, AdWords, and Coke are registered trademarks of Google, Google, and the Coca Cola Bottling Company.

Earnings disclaimer (mostly from memory): If you think I'm promising that you'll definitely make more money with Winner Alert, you're nuts. Individual results will vary. Manufactured in a facility that processes peanuts. We sell no wine before its time.