A/B Testing is a fundamental part of the Marketing process. For those who have never heard of it, A/B testing is a process of taking two versions of the same email and comparing them both based on several different variables (content of the email, time they’re sent, Subject Line etc).
This is done with a small percentage of our audience and based on either opens or clicks over a determined period of time. At the end of that time period, the most successful version of the email will be sent to the rest of the audience.
Now where does Marketing Cloud sit in all of this? Well, there is a bit of history to it. Originally, you would have to create random data extensions and figure it out yourself. So that is manually comparing two separate email sends, which are sent to two smaller randomly defined audiences, figuring out which version won, and then sending the most successful version to the remaining audience.
Marketing Cloud then developed an A/B test tool which pretty much did everything above but in one central location. This made it easier for end users to review the results and have the winning email be sent automatically at the end of the test.
But now we have Path Optimizer, taking the A/B Testing tool and adding it to Journey Builder. With this, we can run a journey and have an A/B test run as part of this. We can also have up 10 options with our test (before it was only 2).
Once a winning version is determined, other paths in the test will be switched off, allowing all the new contacts to only go through the winning path.
Interested in setting this up? Our Marketing Cloud team would be happy to help. Just Contact Us!