What is A/B Split Testing and Why Use it?

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To truly understand exactly what A/B split testing is, we have to travel back in time to high school science class.

In any true experiment, you always need a control group and a test group to be able to track what's happening. The control group stays the same but is put through the same tests as the test group. The test group contains the variables.

Wonderfully, A/B split testing can be used for direct mail, email marketing, landing pages and banner ads. In all, A/B split testing is an incredibly versatile tool that may seem challenging at first, but is amazingly effective for distilling down how successful various changes you make actually are. So, to fully understand what's going on with A/B split testing, we're going to examine a basic example

. In this case, we're going to use email marketing. Your company has a list of 10,000 email marketing subscribers and you want to test the effectiveness of certain subject lines. You'll track the success of each subject line through individual promotional codes. But, each email will be promoting the same deal.

Divide your email list into two groups, each containing 5,000 recipients.

- Group A is going to get the subject line, "Hurry to Save on Last Minute Deals" and it'll contain the promotional code SLA, for "Subject Line A."

- Group B's subject line is, "Monster Sale Ends at Midnight," and it'll have the accompanying promotional code SLB or "Subject Line B."

Send out both emails and wait for the sales to come in. To determine which subject line is the most effective, track which promotional codes were entered.

That's A/B split testing at the most basic level. SimplyCast offers A/B split testing as part of our email marketing service. Same idea, you make two campaigns and change certain variables in each. The added bonus is our software will track which list has the most opens for 24 hours and then send the message with the higher rate to the remainder of the subscribers. You enter your variables, pick the percentage split and send.

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