When you setup a new campaign in SDAconnect, you can now choose to run a standard campaign, where every recipient receives exactly the same email, or an A/B campaign. This page explains more about what A/B testing is, why you might use it and how it all works.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing is a way of working out which of two different options will be the most effective. This can help you decide which email will the best one to send to your subscriber list from two different options which are labeled A and B.

The basic idea is that you send Version A to a small number of your subscribers, and Version B to another small group. The results (opens or clicks) are measured, and a winner is chosen. Then that winning version is sent out to all the remaining subscribers.

Why use A/B testing?

A/B testing offers a simple way for you to get the most opens and clicks from your campaign. 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 "Trial membership" promotion versus a "1st month free" promotion.
• Test two different "from names" to see which generates the most opens.

For any campaign, there are three different areas you can test. The subject line, the 'from' name and email address and the actual email content itself.

1. Subject line test - Taking a small subset of your recipients, for example 20%, you'll send half of them an email with one subject line, and the other half a different subject line. Then you can watch the results come in for as long or as short a time as you feel comfortable with. Once you know which one performs the best, you send the email, with that winning subject line in place, to the remaining 80% of your subscribers.

2. Email content test - You'll create two different emails to test and send them both to a subset of your recipients. Then (automatically or manually) the winning version is sent to the rest of your recipients. You could have only slight design differences, or something more major, depending on what you want to test.

3. From name and from email test - In this test, the content and the subject are the same for each email, and only the 'from' name and the 'from' address differ. Whichever gains the most opens or clicks (at your choice) wins, and is sent to the rest of the list.

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.

A/B testing is available for any current SDAconnect user – if you’re not a current user and want to know more or sign up to SDAconnect, go to www.sdaconnect.co.uk or email us at sales@sdasolutions.com.