What the test told us not to build
The preview path is the send path. Everything else it taught us was subtraction.
Affinity means the personalised values are literal constants in each send's HTML, so the preview path is the send path and nothing can render differently from what was approved. A handful of pre-rendered variants, split by connector first and machine second. The concept worked. The more useful result was a list of things we were about to build and did not need.
The concept working was the boring half. The catalogue being wrong is what paid for the test.
THE PREMISE
Constants, not merge fields
Not a first name poured over a template. The personalised values are literal constants in the HTML of each send, which means there is no render step between approval and delivery — the thing you previewed is the thing that goes. That buys a handful of pre-rendered variants instead of one email with holes in it. Connector first, because it changes the colour and the link. Machine second, because it only changes an image.
THE CATALOGUE
Twenty, not seven
We had planned for seven machine variants. The catalogue had twenty. An Aarke Carbonator PRO is not a Carbonator 3, and the difference is exactly the kind a matcher gets wrong quietly: it would have taken the generic path while looking like a match. Nothing would have errored. The send would have gone out and read fine.
THE COVERAGE
Two images, two thirds
Two cylinder images cover sixty-six per cent of the audience. So a full machine image library is an upgrade for about a third of people, not the thing that makes the send work — which is the opposite of the order we would have built it in.
Affinity
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