Experiments Overview

Communicating with your users is a tricky business. There are so many variables involved in creating the right message, at the right time, for the right audience. Fortunately, Iterable experiments can help you determine, with confidence, which of your ideas users respond to the most and which versions of a campaign truly contribute the most to conversions.

This article explains how to experiment with Iterable campaigns so you can create experiences that users respond to favorably, while promoting the outcomes you seek.

# In this article

# A/B testing

A/B testing is the type of experimentation used in Iterable. With this type of experimentation, you apply a specific change to a variant of an original (control) campaign, then run both campaigns to test which is most effective.

Let's consider a case where you've created a welcome campaign that new users really respond to. You don't have a lot of time to craft new messaging, but wonder whether simply adding emojis to the subject line might lead to even more opens.

To test whether users respond favorably to this change before implementing it for all users who receive your welcome campaign, set up an experiment to send the original campaign to one group of users and a variant of the campaign with an emoji in the subject line to another group. Once the experiment ends, evaluate the impact of the change by reviewing the performance metrics in Experiment Analytics. If a variant performs better than the original campaign (perhaps it has more Opens than the original), consider using it as your new welcome message.

Use Iterable experiments to:

• Test the effect of certain parts of a message (such as from name, subject line, or preheader) on opens and open rates.

• Find a send time that maximizes opens and conversions.

• Evaluate the potential to improve conversions with updates to a message's body.

• Assess the impact of Send Time Optimization on opens and conversions.

• Compare conversion rates for a campaign to those of users who don't receive it (a holdout group).

• Create a variant of a campaign that you can use for future sends if it outperforms your original control campaign.

# Required permissions

When working with experiments, you must have the following permissions:

• To view the settings for your Iterable project, you need the Project Configuration > Project Settings permission.

• To create campaigns and experiments, you need the Workflows, Campaigns & Experiments > Draft permission.

• To schedule or activate campaigns, you need the Workflows, Campaigns & Experiments > Activate & Manage permission.

# Terms you should know

As you work wih experiments in Iterable, understanding these terms will be helpful: