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.

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
November 18, 2021 08:35 AM

Hi All,

 

We recently rolled this out LIVE to all pro+ portals. Thank you for all your patience and interest in this project.

 

Best,

 

Shane Janssens

In Beta
January 13, 2021 04:51 AM

Hi Everyone,

 

Thank you for your pateince here. I am ecstatic to be updating this post to "In Beta" today. We rolled this feature out to a list of Beta users from this morning. If you want to be added to it please reach out to support and they can request it through the proper channels. 

We know this has been a very popular request and the team have been working so hard to deliver this as fast as possible. We hope to be rolling it out to a wider audience in coming weeks.

Best,

 

Shane

Being Reviewed
December 02, 2020 05:25 AM

Idea Submitted
November 23, 2020 03:50 AM

Hi All! Again thank you for your patience on this feature. Again we are almost there with some final checks and tests. We hope to have this released to Beta next week. I will update this post when it is live. Please do reach out to your CSM if you want to be part of the Beta - By this I mean send an email to support and they can add you to the Beta list.

 

We are really excited to get this out after months of hard work by the team here.

 

Thank you!


Best,

 

Shane Janssens

November 13, 2020 08:56 AM

Hi All, 

I just wanted to update the recent questions @petersherlock93 , @jmcguire20 , @stuartborders , @JPD123 

 

We are in final testing here. expecting to release to beta group in late Nov. If you want to get siogned up for Beta please reach out to your CSM and they can add you to list.

 

I commented with updates but they seem to be lost in thread. Sorry about confusion.

 

Best,

 

Shane

September 30, 2020 01:36 AM

Hi all,

 

Quick update here. Again thank you for your patience and feedback here. We are currently moving to testing this feature. It will take a bit of time as it is a big change on the email infastructure. I will update here as soon as it is in Beta. I wont give an exact timing as it depends on what we find in testing. Anyone who has signed up will be in the first release group, if you have not asked support for this please reach out and they can add you to the beta list.

 

Thank you, it is very close now.

 

Best,

 

Shane

 

Being Reviewed
September 09, 2020 06:07 AM

Hi Everyone,

 

Thank you so much for all your interest and comments in this forum. I am the Product Manager on Marketing Email and I wanted to jump in here as I have been closest to this project for past few months. We are so close, we had hit a couple of small bumps that set us back with the complexity of this build. We are in the final stretch and we are talking about delivering this in September. We have had 2 teams involved in building this and we are so excited to release the Beta as soon as we can. I will update this post as soon as it is ready for beta.

Thank you for your patience and continued interest in this project.

 

Best,

 

Shane

July 24, 2020 05:46 AM

Hi folks - Jumping in here again from the HubSpot Product team. I want to apologize for how long this has taken. This work is in progress and is a high priority for the team. Unfortunately, we have hit a number of snags during the development of this, which is slowing down the release. Hopefully in another month or so we should have clarity on timing. I'll post here as soon as we have more details to share. In the meantime please feel free to keep commenting, and upvoting the post.

April 20, 2020 01:58 PM

@btuttle279 Absolutely - just sent over a message. We can jump on a call and walk through what this will all look like! 

April 20, 2020 12:57 PM

Hi folks - Just posting a quick update on this thread. We are still focused on this project. Waiting on a couple of the backend changes to wrap up before we move into a Beta. Unfortunately, the work took a bit longer than originally anticipated. We are targeting getting the feature into a Beta this quarter (hopefully sometime in late May/ early June). As we roll out the Beta I will announce that in this forum, and post a form for you all to fill out to join. So hang tight for that!


We are very excited to get this one rolled out to you all and to start collecting feedback on it.

February 26, 2020 09:16 AM

Hi Folks - 

As @Shay mentioned I will be taking over this thread. I wanted to post an update and ask a couple of questions to the group here. Here is the basic functionality we will be supporting in the Beta:

  • A simple 50-50 split between 2 variants 
  • Ability to start and end tests on the same automated email (without cloning and republishing). 
  • Ability to see a history of the tests run on that automated email. 
  • Manually choosing a winner based on open/ click data. 

When digging into this project we realized that AB testing for Automated emails differs from regular 1-off batch emails. The main difference is that Automated emails have the potential to last forever. Thus we needed to support the ability to start and end multiple tests on an Automated email. Tracking those changes and tests over time. Here are some questions I had for the group:

 

Q1: How do you all keep track of the different experiments and tests you have run today with Batch Email? Or with other tools (website pages, CTAs, etc.)?  

Q2: Are their other metrics that are important to picking a winning variant other than Open & Click information? What are they and how do you solve for that today?

Q3: What are the other important pieces of functionality that are missing from above? And which are the most important to you? (ex/ configurable percentages, multivariant, calculations to pick a winner, ability to have HS pick a winner, etc.) 

 

We are getting very close to having a Beta. Once we have it I will post a form in this thread in order for you all to join. We will then be quickly iterating and adding more advanced functionality.  

 

February 14, 2020 08:09 AM

Hi all! Two quick updates for you on this:

 

Number 1: Progress is going well, we have our new A/B framework in good shape and at the moment we're focusing on the new in-app features needed to begin/end and analyse this new type of A/B test for workflow emails. This is a big update on what is currently available for batch emails, and will give you the ability to end an A/B test and start a new one on the same email without needing to rebuild the email over and over again. Getting very close now! 

 

Number 2: Moving forward this feature, the updates on it's release and all feedback will be handled by my colleague @jaleonard19. Jake is also a PM here working on our marketing email tools and has actually been the one spearheadding this feature for some time now so you'll be in great hands. 

 

Jake is currently working on our release plans and will be sharing a public beta signup form with you all as soon as it's ready. Thank you all again for your feedback and suggestions. Looking forward to seeing the impact this will have for you all.

December 19, 2019 01:57 AM

Will do @petersherlock93

December 11, 2019 03:32 AM

Will do @EJVFernyhough ! We'll be sharing a beta sign up form with everyone on this post when it's available so everyone will have the opportunity to sign up once it's open.

December 11, 2019 02:40 AM

@AJernigan can do Smiley Happy

November 18, 2019 07:12 AM

Hi @ridingforlife I can definitely share more. At the moment we're making good progress but factoring in the upcoming US and EU holiday season it's unlikely that we'll be hitting beta-ready in Q4 but safe to say that we'll have a beta in Q1 2020. As soon as we have an open beta we'll offer it up to everyone in this thread to give it a try. 

November 04, 2019 09:20 AM

Hi all, just to keep everyone updated on our progress here, we've been making decent headway with the infrastructure planning and development roadmap for this feature and are making meaningful progress towards a beta.

 

There's still a lot of moving pieces here so we don't have a concrete date on when we'll be opening up a beta but I wanted to keep you all in the loop and confirm that we're definitely focused on this and are actively working on it.

August 14, 2019 02:27 AM

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.

August 13, 2019 10:39 AM

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. 

In Planning
January 29, 2019 01:39 PM

Hi all, I wanted to share a quick status update with you on this. We've spent some time researching options for this feature and are making good progress. We'll soon be heading into a dedicated research phase and as we get close to a beta of this we'll open it up to everyone on this post to get early access. Please do keep your feedbac/upvotes coming, we really appreciate it.

November 16, 2018 02:07 PM

Thank you all for sharing your feedback and use cases on this. The product team is currently thinking about how to solve this, and will post updates here. 

April 06, 2017 05:05 PM

A/B testing an entire workflow to see what places could be improved to improve conversion rates.

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.