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How to Set Up A/B Testing

A/B testing in Cold Email Outreach lets you test two or more variations of a subject line or email body within the same campaign. SalesTarget.ai automatically splits your leads between the variations and tells you which version performs better — so you can continuously improve your outreach based on real data, not guesswork.

What Can You A/B Test?

Element

Examples

Subject Line

"Quick question, {{first_name}}" vs. "{{company_name}} + SalesTarget.ai"

Email Body

Different opening lines, value propositions, or calls to action

Call to Action

"Book a 15-min call" vs. "Would this be relevant for your team?"

Sender Name

Your full name vs. first name only

Step 1: Enable A/B Testing on an Email Step

  1. Go to Cold Email Outreach → Campaigns and open or create a campaign.

  2. In the sequence builder, click on the email step you want to test.

  3. Click Add Variant (or the A/B icon) on that step.

  4. A Variant B editor will appear alongside your original Variant A.

Step 2: Write Your Variants

In Variant A, write your original subject line and email body. In Variant B, change the element you want to test.

Best practice: Test only one element at a time. If you change both the subject line and the body, you won't know which change caused the difference in results.

Step 3: Set the Traffic Split

Set how you want to split your leads between the two versions. The default is 50% / 50%. You can adjust this (e.g., 70/30) if you want to protect more of your list with the safer variant while testing a riskier one.

Step 4: Choose Your Winning Metric

Metric

Best used when

Open Rate

Testing subject lines

Reply Rate

Testing email body or CTA

Click Rate

Testing emails with links or resources

Step 5: Launch and Monitor

  1. Launch your campaign as normal.

  2. Go to the Campaign Dashboard → A/B Test Results to monitor performance.

  3. You'll see side-by-side metrics for each variant: emails sent, open rate, reply rate, click rate.

Step 6: Apply the Winner

Once you have statistically meaningful results (generally after at least 100 sends per variant):

  1. Go to A/B Test Results and click Pick Winner.

  2. Select the winning variant.

  3. SalesTarget.ai will switch all remaining and future sends in that campaign to the winning version.

Tip: Don't pick a winner too early. Let each variant send to at least 100 prospects before drawing conclusions.

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