Automate A/B testing emails with sequences

With A/B testing, you can experiment with different versions of your sequence emails to determine which performs better with your audience. Testing email steps in your sequences can help you refine your outreach, enhance prospect engagement, and improve your conversion rates. 

A/B testing will automatically split sends evenly across the versions of your emails and capture data on sends, opens, clicks, replies, and meetings booked for each version. Once you’ve collected enough data to make a decision, you can turn off individual template versions and create a new test to continue iterating and improving. 

Define A/B test variables

A/B tests work best when testing one variable at a time. Some variables you can consider testing: 

• Subject lines: Craft compelling subject lines to entice recipients to open the email.
• Email copy and messaging: Experiment with different wording and tone to maximize reader engagement.
• Personalization tokens: Tailor the email content using personalization tokens for a more relevant experience.
• CTA placement: Test the placement and wording of call-to-action buttons.

It’s recommended to: 

• Run your A/B tests until at least 100 contacts have received each version of your email before analyzing your results to ensure you have a statistically significant sample size.
• Continuously test to keep improving.
• Test one variable at a time. Try modifying just one thing, such as the subject line, to ensure that you can understand which change led to the improvement.

Please note: contacts are randomly assigned a version, so it's possible sends may not be 50/50 (especially with smaller lists). As you enroll more contacts, sends should become more even.

Set up A/B tests for sequences

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Sequences.
• Hover over the name of the sequence you want to edit and click Edit or click Create Sequence to create a new sequence.
• From any manual or automated email click + Add A/B test.
• In the right panel, select your alternate (B) email. You can search existing templates or click Create template to create a new one. 

• Click to toggle the Version B switch on. 

• Click Save existing sequence or Save as new sequence.

Please note: only contacts enrolled in the sequence after the A/B test is added will receive the new version. Contacts who are already enrolled will need to be unenrolled and re-enrolled to receive the new version.

Analyze A/B tests for sequences

Once contacts are enrolled in your sequence, users with an assigned Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise seat can monitor the performance of both versions within the sequence builder. 

A/B test results will also appear in the Step Performance table on the sequence Performance tab. 

Each email can have up to six versions and up to four versions toggled on at a time. Once one version has been turned off, you can turn on more tests by toggling the Version on. You can add new templates or clone existing templates to test similar content rather than updating an existing template.

End A/B test

Once you determine which version performs better, you can end the experiment. To end the A/B test:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Sequences.
• Hover over the name of a sequence you want to edit and click Edit.
• Click to toggle the underperforming Version switch off.
• Click Save existing sequence or Save as new sequence.

Please note: any contacts already enrolled in the sequence that have not yet received the email will continue to receive both versions. Contacts enrolled after the A/B test is turned off will only receive the version that is still toggled on.