the art of micro testing

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a ton of ad creative testing on Meta.

For instance:

I started out by launching 30 different image creatives, all at micro budgets.

And I let each one run until it hit $20 in spend.

Now, $20 is basically nothing if you're running ads straight to a sale...

Which is why the results were so wild to look at.

A bunch of ads popped and brought in ZERO sales.

Some managed 1 or 2…

And a few came out swinging with 3 or 4 sales almost right away.

That may not sound like much…

But the gap between an ad that does nothing and one that pulls 3 or 4 sales that fast is massive.

This is why most people advertising on Meta struggle to find winners.

They simply haven’t tested enough variations.

And candidly, I haven't always approached ads this way.

Because you didn’t need to.

You could just launch a handful of ads, and if any one of them was decent, they’d perform right out of the gate…

AND have legs to run for 3-6+ months.

But in the post-Andromeda world…

This micro-testing approach has gone from "nice idea" to basic survival.

Everyone’s feed has been flooded with 100x more images and videos…

So finding a winner requires a lot more ammo than it used to.

Why do I bring this up?

Because I've been doing another version of “micro testing” for years:

Daily emails.

Each email is a tiny test.

It’s a low-stakes swing.

One that gives you an almost-instantaneous read on whether an angle, a story, or a sales idea actually hits with your audience.

If it pops, awesome...

You just found a vein of resonance worth digging into.

If it flops, also fine.

You didn’t sink a month into producing it.

Tomorrow is another at-bat and chance to hit a home run.

That's the beauty of it.

It lowers the emotional pressure around every individual send...

And over time, it helps you map the pockets of emotion that actually drive response.

What your people care about.

What they ignore.

What makes them lean in.

And of course, what makes them buy.

So the real value of daily email isn't just revenue.

It's the feedback loop.

And once you start seeing each send that way, the blank page gets a lot less scary.

That's all I got for ya today, though.

Jim Hamilton

​