Why use A/B email testing?
A split test campaign basically is creating different versions of an email campaign and sending it to a portion of a particular list.
This helps you understand which version of an email works best and can be preferred to be sent to the rest of your contacts which improves your email marketing over time.
How to draft an A/B testing email journey:
1. From your Freshmarketer dashboard > select 'marketing journeys' from the left task panel.
2. On the left top corner click on 'Create new' > select 'Create new journey' from the dropped down list of options.
3. Name the journey for your reference > click on 'Create'
4. Once done, a canvas view is displayed for you to drag and drop 'blocks' to configure your journey.
5. Select an appropriate trigger to choose which contacts you would like to split test with.
eg: 'Added to a list' or 'Added to a segment' block.
Note: A trigger is mandatory for any customer journey to start.
6. After selecting an appropriate trigger, Drag and drop the 'Split Traffic' block which you will find under 'Controls' section from the right hand side panel.
7. Map the trigger chosen, to the split traffic block and once you click on the block, you are prompted to specify the percentage of traffic for each route.
8. Once done, you can configure the rest of the journey depending on your use-case.
An example of an A/B testing email campaign for a customer journey below.
Elements that can be tested using A/B testing of email campaigns:
Subject lines and pre-headers-
Open rates majorly depend upon the subject line and pre-headers of a campaign.
You can experiment with variants of the same and check which campaign has given better open rates.
Parameters which you can consider changing,
> Try different orders of words.
> Length of the subject line (long or short).
> Personalisation (Use first name or company etc.)
Email content-
Including engaging content in your email can help generate more leads from your readers.
The click rates in the reports section will help you understand which version of a campaign has been more engaging for the recipients.
Parameters which can be considered,
> The email body length of content. (differs for each business)
> Including hyperlinks or CTA elements in the email content. (Example: Different colours and button size of the CTA element.)
> Checking different offers provided by a particular business to the readers.
An example of an E-commerce use case:
Suppose an E-commerce platform would like to test a specific product offer with the visitors who sign up.
The marketer can draft a customer journey where a particular contact list or a segment is included and configure the 'split traffic' block also specifying the required traffic split in percentage.
So according to the traffic split, a portion of the contacts will get one variant of the product discount coupon code and the rest will get a different coupon code to apply.
Depending on how many times a particular coupon code was used, will determine which variant has performed better and be used for the remaining contacts in your database.