How to create a Split Test Email Campaign

The Split Testing campaign type is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to increase the open and click rates of your campaigns. It also improves the general effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

Split Testing Campaigns allow you to send two or more versions of your message to different portions of your list.  Then, you can compare the reporting results afterwards. You can even create a special kind of Split Testing Campaign that will pause after sending a portion of your emails, determine which version of your message has the higher read rate or click rate, and then send that winning message to the remainder of your list.

Setup Your Split Testing Campaign

To create a Split Testing Campaign, go to the Marketing tab and follow these steps:

1)  Click the "Create New Campaign" button on the right. Then, type a name for your campaign, and choose the Split Testing option.

2)  Then, click "Next."

3)  On the next page, choose which list(s) you would like to send the campaign to, and click "Next" again.

Create Your Message

Now, you will see a page that asks you to create a message. This is where you will create the first message in your Split Campaign. You can create a blank message, choose a template, or choose a Past campaign to base your first message off of.

Once you've chosen a template to base your message on, you will be brought to a Message Editor Page.  Here you can edit the messages and make the necessary modification that you want to test (could be the subject, content, from name, etc.)  The page would initially have 1 message.  You would need to add at least 1 more message to proceed.

On the right portion of the screen, you can create your first message. You'll see that you are able to edit the From Name, From Address, Subject, and content of your message.  Once you are done editing/composing your first message for your Split Campaign, click the link that say add new messag on the left, to add the next message to your Split Campaign.

When you click add new message, a duplicate of your first message will be created. You can then edit the From Name, From Address, Subject, and content of the second message to make any changes you wish to make.

Tip: Try changing the subject line. The subject line of your message is often one of the most important pieces of your message (as far as affecting open rates is concerned).   Adding certain keywords or re-phrasing the subject lines of your messages can often increase the number of subscribers who open your campaign.

You may also wish to change details in the content of the message, such as adding/removing certain keywords, or changing links or images.

You can add as many messages as you like to your single Split Campaign, however we recommend keeping the number of messages between 2 to 4, for optimal results.

You can click between the message tabs on the left to view/edit your messages at any time.   If you wish to delete a message, just click the X to the right of the Message Title.

Standard Split Campaign

When you have finished adding/editing the messages in your Split Campaign, scroll down to see more Split Testing options.

If you'd like, you can set up your campaign to simply send all versions of your messages to equal percentages of your list. When the campaign is complete, you can compare the reports between all messages. This is seen as a standard Split Campaign. In this example, we are sending two messages in the Split Campaign, and so each message will be sent to 50% of the list.

Advanced: Determining The Winner

If you want, you can set up your Split Campaign to first send the messages to a smaller portion of the list, then, pause, and then determine which message is the winner, based on either the open or click rate.  Once the winning message is determined, that message will be sent to the remainder of the list.  This helps ensure the best possible response rate for your campaign.

In the example below, we are sending two messages in the Split Campaign.

As you can see, we have set it so that the first message will be sent to 10% of the list, and the second message will also be sent to 10% of the list, and then the campaign will pause for two days.   After two days have passed, our Email Marketing software will look at which of the messages has the highest open rate (in other words, which message did more subscribers open), and send that message to the remaining 80% of the list.

There are a lot of settings that can be changed here — this is merely one example of an advanced Split Testing Campaign that you can create. For example, you could choose to pause for a certain number of hours, weeks, or even months before determining the winner, rather than days.

You can also choose to determine the winning message based on the best click rate (meaning the message with the most link clicks will be sent to the remaining portion of the list).

Another thing you can adjust is the number of different messages, as well as the percentage of the list that each message is sent to.

Reporting

When the Split Campaign has finished sending, you can view the overall report for the campaign, as well as view individual reports per message.

To view the report, click the Campaigns tab, find your campaign, and click on Reports next to it. By default, you will see the overall report (the combined statistics for all messages). You will see a drop-down menu in the upper right corner that allows to filter the reports to reflect only the statistics of a certain message in the Split Campaign.

When you change the filter drop-down menu, your report will automatically be filtered to show you only the results of the message you selected. You will see the number of opens, clicks, bounces, etc, change to reflect this.

Clicking on any of the tabs across the top of the report will only show you the opens, link clicks, bounces, forwards, etc, for that specific message.