It can be useful to leave the confines of email marketing when looking for ways to improve performance, even into sports science. The senior coach with my rugby team will, if we lose like last Saturday, demand of each player in the huddle after the final whistle: “What did you do well today?”

No glib replies are allowed, such as: “Cleverly avoided winning against an inferior side,” which came to my mind. Instead he waited until he got positive replies from everyone. In training this week he will concentrate on the positives as well, and hopefully improving our scrums.

If your email marketing software shows that your conversion rate has dropped, or even not improved, then you need to discover what to change to get back to where you were and where you should be. However, not all your landing pages will be all bad so be mindful not to discard the good with the bad or you are unlikely to improve.

A landing page is subjective. Effective design is vital, the one essential, but this is not a simple case of ticking a box. So opinions matter. The way to obtain opinions is to ask.

Set up a little test for members of your staff. Work out which are in the demographic of those you aimed the campaign towards, and apparently missed, and pay special attention to their comments, but still take notice of everyone’s.

Sit them in front of a phone, iPad, laptop or desktop, ping through the marketing email and then ask them to click through. Give them just a few seconds in front of the landing page, because that’s all any subscriber will manage, and then ask a few questions.

Find out what they disliked about the landing page. Their answers will be valid, so record them. Next, almost as an afterthought, ask them what they liked about it.

You will probably get a reply with little thought. It will be a reaction, nothing more. It will be just what you want because that is the way your newsletter subscribers will see it too.

Test the bad points but leave the good alone, or better still, emphasise them.

It normally works, although I’m nervous about this weekend’s match.