HubSpot Ideas

katharine

Enable A/B testing in workflow/automated emails

I was disappointed to see that I can't do an A/B test in an automated email:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/email/how-to-create-an-a-b-test-email

 

Marketo (a HubSpot competitor) allows this functionality.

Can you add this to the product sometime?

It's particularly helpful with a Welcome email sequence which is key to on-boarding new customers.

293 Replies
Rachel_S
Participant

Bump! This is a must-have feature and I'm very disappointed that we don't have it!

petersherlock93
Participant

This feature would change the game. We need it!

donz
Member

Any update from the HubSpot team?  This is badly needed!

nick_zinc
Member

I've found a straight forward way to do this for now. I'm not sure if this is a great idea or just dumb.

 

Basically, I simply created a logic branch that splits the contacts based on the first letter of their email.

 

A-M go to one version, N-Z go to the second.

 

Not the most elegant of solutions, but seems like it should work. Please chime in if you see any issues with it.

Screen Shot 2019-08-08 at 4.59.59 PM.png

jennysowyrda
Community Manager

Thanks for sharing @nick_zinc!

JeremyHong
Contributor | Diamond Partner

@jennysowyrda since this post was marked as "solved", does that mean this isn't on HubSpot's radar, or won't be looked into? Yes, the question was answered, but the problem is not solved. Is there a way to reopen this?

 

None of the above "solutions" allow you to send the winning version to a percentage of the contacts, as the A/B tool does, which is incredibly useful.

 

Since we have the ability to control the times that the workflows execute, we could negate the issue that was provided by HS - that the variable of time would essentially cancel out any A/B testing..Enabling this feature would certainly provide more benefits than drawbacks. 

jennysowyrda
Community Manager

Hi @JeremyHong

 

If you are looking for this feature to be implemented in the future, I would recommend following this thread in the ideas forum.

 

As this conversation is in the product forums, it is still on my radar and will be the space for users to share workarounds.

 

Thank you,

Jenny

JeremyHong
Contributor | Diamond Partner

Thanks for directing me appropriately @jennysowyrda !

petersherlock93
Participant

**Just a heads up**

 

I was told by my account representative/customer success manager that this feature was stripped from the product road map and there is no product focused solution coming out anytime soon - out side of the round robin/number hack, or using third party email platforms to accomplish the goal.

 

Please let me know if you or your teammmebers have heard any other news.

 

 

Shay
HubSpot Product Team

Hi @petersherlock93  (and all following along). I can confirm that this isn't the case, A/B testing of automated emails is still very much a priority for us.

 

For the past few months we have been focused primarily on work on the underlying infrastructure of email, to ensure speed, stability and reliability of the overall platform and user experience. We're nearing the end of this work right now which enables us to continue to build on top of the email tool and makes it possible for us to build more net-new functionality in a stable and scalable way, A/B testing of automated emails being a great example of that. 

 

While there hasn't been much news on this specific feature lately, it's something that is very high on our roadmap and now that we're seeing results from our infrastructure and performance work we're able to refocus our efforts on bringing these new features to the product. Rest assured that it's still something we're focused on. 

 

While we aren't yet at the stage of a beta for this feature, I'd recommend checking out these resources (one and two) from the HubSpot blog that provide interim solutions and as soon as we have a beta that's available for everyone I'll share a signup form for everyone here to try out. Thanks again for your feedback and for keeping the momentum going here. 

petersherlock93
Participant

Thanks for the detailed response and the reassurance! Excited to see when these new features roll out.

 

Here is the response that I received to clarify:

 

Screen Shot 2019-08-13 at 10.57.23 AM.png

Shay
HubSpot Product Team

Thanks @petersherlock93! Just a case of good ol' miscommunication 🙂  The "on pause" here just means that we were still deep into the infrastructure and reliability work needed for this (and other) functionality. It was by no means deprioritised or taken off the roadmap, just needed to get the ordering right on the priorities to make sure we didn't put the cart in front of the horse, so to speak.

mariuss
Participant

Please build this feature. Can't believe you're selling an EDM solution without it. Frustrating UX and have to rely on competitor in the end.

jewsbur090
Member

This is most definitely needed! Can't believe this thread goes back to 2017 and nothing has been done about it. Can anyone share what competitors they used to get around this?


Cheers!

aaronbernard
Participant

I would love to know when this feature is finally implemented! It will be very valuable for my company's marketing initiatives.

petersherlock93
Participant

@jewsbur090 @aaronbernard Couldn't agree more!

RyanPearDeck
Member

Same! it would be greate to include A/B testing for automated workflows.

sshearer149
Member

Does anyone have more detailed instructions about the Zapier integration? 
The referenced article (https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/how-to-a/b-test-workflow-emails-using-the-lead-rotator-or-zapier) is a bit confusing to me and I'm at "Step 4. Build Your Zap" --> how/why do we add a contact's email when the whole objective is to randomly assign multiple contacts? Or am I supposed to enter something different in that field?

 

 

BastiSchuhl
Top Contributor

A/B Testing would be a great feature to add to workflows (automated emails).

Annabel
Participant

We just signed up as Hubspot users, and I was also surprised to find that A/B testing was not available for workflows. I'm looking forward to seeing this feature released soon.