Email Marketing Questions

When you are setting up a new campaign you can choose to run a standard campaign, where everyone in your database will receive the same email, or you can select to do an A/B campaign. Below we go into detail about what A/B testing actually is, why it might be useful to you and how it works.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing, otherwise known as split testing, is a great way of working out which of two different options will be most effective. When used for your email campaigns, you can use A/B testing to help you decide which email will be the best one to send to your database from two different options which are labeled A and B.

The basic idea is that you send both versions to two small groups. The results (opens and clicks) will be measured, and you will see which campaign was more popular. Then you can use that campaign to send out to all of your remaining database.

Why should I use A/B testing?

A/B testing is a simple way for you to maximise the number of times you campaign is opened and clicks. With A/B testing you could:

• Test two subject lines, to see which one results in the most opens or clicks
• Test two completely different designs to see which one gets the best results
• Test a “Free Shipping” promotion versus a “15% Off” promotion
• Test two different “from names” to see which generates the most opens

As well as comparing as many other variables as you can think of. Since A/B testing is built right into your account, it’s really easy to do.

How do I actually run an A/B test of my campaign?

When you create a new campaign, you have two options to choose from, regular campaign or A/B split campaign.

Click the A/B tab to show your A/B testing options.

Depending on which option you choose, you’ll see some extra fields appear (to enter your alternate subject or “from” details). If you choose to A/B test email content, you will get an extra step when defining the content for your campaign.

Instead of just importing once, you go through the import process twice, once for version A and once for version B.

Select your subsciber lists as normal, and you’ll move on to finalise the settings for your test. At this last step, you get to decide how many people get version A and version B, and how many receive the winning version.

Use the slider to set the sizes of each group. You also define how the winner is selected, whether it is from most opens, most unique clicks, or the most clicks on a specific link in your email.

Finally, you’ll need to select how long to wait before deciding the winner (from one hour up to several days). Keep in mind that you can always manually declare a winner at any time by visiting the reports.

Once all that is done, you can send yourself tests of both versions, and then fire off your campaign as normal.

What do A/B test reports look like?

While your A/B test is running (before the time period you set expires, or you manually declare a winner) there is a special A/B test report you will see. It looks like this:

You can easily see which version is performing better according to the measurement you chose, and you can also see the time remaining for the test. Notice the link in the top right to manually choose a winner.

You might choose to do that if one version is clearly better, so you don’t have to wait for time to run out. That’s all there is to it!

Once your winner has been decided, the remaining recipients will receive the winning version and you’ll be able to see your normal campaign reports. You can still access the A/B results too, in case you want to revisit them when designing your next campaign.