What is A/B Testing?

In marketing, nothing is proven and different tests have to be carried out in order to find more or less reliable results. In this case, when we refer to A/B testing, we mean testing two resources or versions of a product or service to see which one works better and then developing and applying it.

This test allows you to close, minimise or optimize your marketing strategy. Most large corporations have done this as a way of testing what product they are going to bring to market might work best.

There is more because in many organisations, A/B testing is linked to a change in the philosophy and strategy of the company’s management.

For what reasons should A/B testing be done?

There are several, but the most important ones are aimed at increasing our number of followers, buyers and sales, and thus increasing our profitability. Another reason is to innovate, to change and stand out in the marketing world, to increase our credibility, not to change messages and use the same ones because they will work, and also A/B testing is important to know what our buyer persona needs.

Elements in A/B testing

Various elements must be analyzed according to the prototype to be evaluated. If we are talking about email marketing campaigns, for example, we must consider two different messages, two different words, colours and size of each message, pictures, length of titles and texts, the way you present the price of your products and promotional offers.

Good practices in A/B Testing

In order not to work in vain, we recommend some good practices for this type of marketing A/B testing.

Change one or a few items. To start with, we must change one or a few elements of our action because if we change too many at once we will not know what is really working and what the end customers like best.

Measure the results. Measuring and testing is essential to see which option is the best and the one that needs to be refined.

Patience and more. Email marketing metrics are essential to know if your changes are working. In marketing, there are no definite things and it takes patience to know the variables we are communicating. This test will tell us a lot about the actions to be taken, but this is not always immediate. It takes time to see results, especially in inbound marketing and email marketing.

An example of a test in email marketing

There are a variety of examples, but the one most commonly used to explain testing is the one we can use of a company with an email database of 2,000 customers that decides to create an email campaign with a discount code.

It creates two versions of the same email but with slightly different messages, although the ultimate goal is to sell at a discount. 1,000 people were sent an email with the message, ” The offer ends this Saturday! Use code A1″ and at 1,000, they are sent: “Offer ends soon! Use code B1.”

All other elements, such as design, photographs and so on, are the same for both examples. As results they saw that the email with code A1, achieved a 5% response rate (50 out of 1,000 people who were sent the email), and the second option, with code B1, had a response rate of 3% (30 out of 1,000 people who were sent the email).

This led the company to choose the first option because it was of greater interest to its customers, more effective and is the one it already knows it should use when it wants to run another sales campaign.