Is this much more than a gimmick at the moment?

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The Obama campaign succeeded online in part by taking an obvious step. They tested:

Any time you received an email from the Obama campaign, it had been tested on 18 smaller groups and the response rates had been gauged. The campaign thought all the letters had a good chance of succeeding, but the worst-performing letters did only 15 to 20 percent of what the best-performing emails could deliver. So, if a good performer could do $2.5 million, a poor performer might only net $500,000. The genius of the campaign was that it learned to stop sending poor performers.

I wouldn’t call it genius, but too few marketers do it.

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Patrick Ruffini says the GOP needs to focus on what works, not what consultants say works. And that requires a new mindset:

Operatives — even digital ones — need to be willing to subject everything they do to randomized experiments to show what’s working and what isn’t. (If we did, we’d likely never hear another GOTV robocall again.) The top performers may not be the ones who hit on the first try — but those who can tweak and adjust to achieve the best result over the long run. In a political industry known for its brashness, the key to success moving forward may be an introspective and intellectually curious mindset that comes with constant testing and refinement.

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Restaurants choose their prices, menu layouts, and even item descriptions to maximize each table’s value:

Some restaurants “anchor” prices with a very expensive item that will make everything else look reasonable in comparison. If there’s a $50 steak on the menu, people are probably going to think, “Boy, this place is expensive,” Poundstone says. But if there’s a $100 burger next to it, they’re more likely to buy that $50 steak.

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Because you don’t know better than your customers what they want to do:

The boundaries between “desktop tasks” and “mobile tasks” are fluid, driven as much by the device’s convenience as they are by the ease of the task. Have you ever tried to quickly look up a bit of information from your tablet, simply because you’re too lazy to walk over to your computer? Typed in a lengthy email on your BlackBerry while sitting at your desk, temporarily forgetting your keyboard exists? Discovered that the process to book a ticket from your mobile was easier than using the desktop (looking at you, Amtrak!) because all the extra clutter was stripped away?

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