A/B Testing Your Campaigns – Postscript

Tip: Select any of the images or GIFs in this article for a closer look.

A/B testing is a powerful tool you can use to help ensure you send campaigns that'll see high customer engagement.

How A/B Testing Works

A/B testing is a go-to marketing tool to take the guesswork out of what products, messages, or campaigns will be well received. By testing multiple options, you gather useful data that will help you make informed decisions.

Here's how it works:

Create two (or more) different campaign messages.
Compare your results. You can see which message has a higher earning per message (EPM) or click-through rate (CTR). That message is your more effective message.
Send that effective message to the rest of your customers.

Why You Should A/B Test Your Campaigns

You can get creative and test out different messages. Include images or GIFs, change up message copy, and offer different calls to action (e.g., different promo codes, free shipping offers, etc.).
Learn which messages your subscriber base engages with and apply those learnings to future campaigns.
Identify successful campaigns and send them to your larger customer base with confidence they'll perform well.

Create Your A/B Test Customer Segments

Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Segments.
Select Create Segment in the top-right corner of the page.
Give your segment a Name. Remember you will have multiple, so create a naming convention that will make it easy to tell the various groups apart (e.g., A/B Test Group 1, A/B Test Group 2, Black Friday Test Group 1, Black Friday Test Group 2, etc.)
Select A/B Test Group from the first Segment Criteria drop-down.
Change the following drop-downs to reflect the segment's group number and the total number of groups. For example, Group 1 out of 2 Groups or Group 3 out of 5 Groups. You can create up to five groups.
Select Save Segment in the bottom-right corner.
Repeat these steps for each testing group. Remember to change the segment name and first group number for each.

Create Your Test Campaigns

Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Campaigns.
Select Create Campaign in the top-right corner of the page.
Give your campaign a Name. Remember you will have multiple, so create a naming convention that will make it easy to tell the various groups apart (e.g., A/B Test Group 1, A/B Test Group 2, Black Friday Test Group 1, Black Friday Test Group 2, etc.)
Select the desired testing group from the Segment drop-down.
Now it's time to customize your message.
- Change up the message copy to see if different personalization strategies (e.g., using the subscriber's first name, including product links, etc.) will produce a higher engagement rate.
- Trying out one group with a GIF or image can help you see whether your subscribers engage more with SMS (no image/GIF) or MMS (image/GIF) messages.
- Offer different coupons or promotions to see which gets engagement. Higher discounts, mystery offers, or free shipping are great examples.
Save your campaign.
Repeat these steps for each test message. Remember to change the campaign name, segment, and message for each.

Analyze the Performance Data

After you send your test campaigns, you'll want to wait 24-72 hours before looking at the performance data.

Select Campaigns in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard.
Scroll to Sent Campaigns at the bottom of the page, and locate your test campaigns. You can use the search field if you wish to filter listed campaigns.

When it comes to determining the effectiveness of one campaign over another, ask yourself these questions:

Which campaign has a lower unsubscribe rate?
Which campaign has a higher click-through rate (CTR)?
Which campaign has a higher conversion rate?
Which campaign has higher earnings per message (EPM)?

For the campaigns pictured above, our End of Summer Test 1 campaign performed better overall.

What to Do with the Data

Once you know which campaign performed better, you can look at the characteristics of the message.

Did it include an image or GIF?
What type of offer did you include? Was it a percent or amount off, a mystery discount, or a product-with-purchase offer?
Did you personalize the message with the subscriber's name or a link to a specific product?

You can apply these learnings to future campaigns that you build for this subscriber list. Or, if you were testing two messages on smaller segments, you can clone the more effective campaign and send it to your larger customer base.

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