You can use A/B campaigns to systematically improve your email marketing performance by testing different campaign elements before sending to your full audience. This approach helps optimize campaign effectiveness by identifying which subject lines, content, or sender names typically perform better with your specific audience, leading to measurable improvements in engagement metrics such as open and click-through rates.
A/B testing enables data-driven decision-making in your email marketing strategy, allowing you to make informed choices about campaign elements rather than relying on assumptions. When properly configured, this testing methodology helps maximize email marketing ROI by ensuring you send the most effective version of your campaign to the majority of your subscribers.
An A/B campaign (also known as a split test campaign) is a method utilized to test which campaign your contacts are the most receptive to or most engaged with.
In other words, it’s a way to test which campaign is the most effective to increase the engagement of your contacts in terms of opens, clicks, or purchases. You can choose what you want to test (content, subject, or from name) and compare the results, as even marginal improvements in drop-off rates can represent a significant gain in sales.
Creating an A/B Campaign
Perform the following steps to create a new A/B campaign:
- To access this feature, visit the navigation panel, click on Marketing > Campaigns, and select Email Campaigns from the expanded menu.
- Select the New Campaign button.
- On the Create New Campaign page, click A/B Email Campaign.
- On the New A/B Campaign page, begin with "Step 1" by entering the campaign name, "from email," and "reply to" email addresses in the Campaign Information section, then move to the Contacts section to select your target group(s) from the available options (lists, segments, suppress lists, suppress segments, and suppress workflows), and optionally associate a campaign tag.
The Address and Language fields are pre-populated as per the values entered on the Account & Billing page but can be modified as needed. If required, enable the "Show email preview link" toggle to automatically insert the text "If you are having trouble viewing this email, click here" at the top of your campaign. Once done, click Next. - In "Step 2" of the New A/B Campaign page, select the winning criteria for A/B testing.
The following options are available:
Top Choices: The campaign sent to the final group combines the subject line and from name from the test group having the highest open rate, together with the content from the test group having the highest click rate.
Highest Open Rate: Everything from the email sent to the test group having the highest open rate is replicated and sent to the final group.
Highest Click Rate: Everything from the email sent to the test group having the highest click rate is replicated and sent to the final group.
Manual Selection: Enables you to select everything after viewing the final campaign's reports.
Highest Click-to-Open Rate: Everything from the email sent to the test group having the highest click-to-open rate is replicated and sent to the final group.
Highest Conversion Rate: Everything from the email sent to the test group having the highest conversion rate is replicated and sent to the final group.
- Enter the split group information for the A/B test. You must fill in all fields for split groups. Two or more groups are required for an A/B split test to be sent. You can select different content, subjects, "from names," "pre-headers," and "send at" times for all different groups. Allocate a percentage to each group; the sum of percentage allocations should not exceed 100%.
Note:The percentage you don’t allocate to split groups will be automatically allocated to the final group (for example, if you only send to 70% of the lists, the remaining 30% will be sent to the final group). If the allocated percentages add up to 100%, there will be no emails sent to the final group based on the winning criteria. You can also set a schedule for when the final campaign will be sent. - Duplicating Test Groups: If you want to send your A/B campaign to more than two test groups, you can simply duplicate the split groups and enter different values for the new ones. To create duplicate split groups, select the test groups and then click the Duplicate icon in the top right corner.
Note:The Duplicate and Delete icons for the split groups are disabled until a split group is selected. You can select multiple split groups to duplicate or delete in bulk. - Optionally, you can send a test email for the campaign. Enter up to 30 recipients for the test email and click Send Test.
Note:The test email recipients do not have to be from the same contact lists that you have selected for the campaign. You can select up to 20 contacts in the form of contact lists and manually enter up to 10 contacts in the form of email addresses. You can select multiple lists for the test email, but the total contacts must be limited to 20. - Optionally, you can use the Pre-Send Calculation toggle button to start calculating the audience three hours prior to sending the campaign and to prevent any delays in delivering campaigns containing numerous segments or suppressions.
Note:The pre-send calculation option is only available for campaigns scheduled at least three hours in advance; enabling it for campaigns scheduled under three hours will result in an error. Once pre-send calculation begins (three hours before send time), the campaign is locked and can no longer be edited at the campaign level. However, the content of already-selected items can still be modified in the content editor. - Click Save to save the campaign as a draft, Schedule Campaign to schedule it for sending, or Send Now to send it immediately, regardless of the scheduled send time. Do remember, the schedule campaign option is only available if a winning criterion other than "Manual Send" is selected and the total size of the test groups is less than 100%.