Optimize Messaging Engagement with Advanced A/B Testing

Get the most out of your campaigns with A/B testing to learn what works for your audience. Experimentation is an industry-wide best practice that helps you validate the effectiveness of your messaging strategy. Use A/B testing to get data-driven learnings about which tactics are more effective rather than relying on outdated or incorrect assumptions. Set up A/B tests today to improve your messaging relevancy and increase conversions.

Uncover Winning Combinations With New Advanced A/B Testing Feature

Conquered A/B testing and ready to level up? We’re excited to launch Advanced A/B testing functionality, which allows you to build up to 10 variants of your message at once. Rather than conducting an A/B test for each individual element you’d like to test, our latest improvements enable you to test multiple elements at the same time, saving you time and resources.

Use Advanced A/B Testing to optimize your messaging efficacy and find the winning combination. You can test multiple variations of the same element (A/B/n testing), or test multiple variables at the same time (multivariate testing). With so many elements to choose from, it’s easy to optimize your strategy in a fraction of the time.

Explore your competing ideas and see which one works best with your audience. For example, ecommerce companies can test variations of their promotions to see which drives the most sales. Media companies can uncover the most appealing headlines to drive traffic to their websites. Gaming companies can discover how to improve their messaging to get more players back in the game.

Upgraded A/B Testing Experience

We’ve improved the OneSignal dashboard by incorporating A/B testing into the core push notification experience. Now, you can easily add an A/B test in the same workflow where you create your message content and quickly build and toggle between variants.

Based on your feedback, we’ve also added the option to adjust your test audience size. Specify the proportion of your audience that you want to serve as a test group, which should be based on your overall audience size and the number of variants used.

As before, you will need to manually select a winner to send to the rest of your audience.

6 Advanced Testing Tactics

With so many different elements to test, it can be difficult to know where to begin. We've compiled some of the most popular testing tactics below for inspiration.

1. Visual Appeal

Test different visual elements to find out what aesthetic is most compelling to your audience. Does adding relevant emojis lead to a higher CTR? Will including an image in the notification improve engagement? Can using a GIF work better than a static image?

Variant A: 20% off sale
Variant B: 20% off sale 💸💸💸
Variant C: 20% off sale 🛍
Variant D: 🤑 20% off sale

2. Personalization

Personalization can be a powerful engagement motivator. Leverage tag substitutions and mention the specific item your audience is interested in. Find out if personalizing your message content increases your engagement.

Variant A: 20% off sale
Variant B: 20% off {{ interested_product | default: ‘sale’ }}

3. Style and Tone

Discover what messaging tone (e.g. factual vs. funny) resonates more with your users by testing different communication styles.

Variant A: Don’t miss our 20% off sale
Variant B: The shrink wrap is in — get 20% off your retail therapy session 😂

4. Time Urgency

If you want users to take a specific action, communicating a sense of urgency may increase your CTR. Test whether time pressure spurs your users to action by experimenting with your message content.

Variant A: 20% off sale
Variant B: Only 3 hours left to get 20% off
Variant C: Hurry! Our 20% off sale ends at midnight tonight.

5. Data and Specificity

Crafting compelling push notifications is both an art and a science. In some instances, intrigue can be used to encourage clicks. In other contexts, specificity pays off. Figure out when to use numbers and when to speak more generally by testing different message variants.

Variant A: 20% off Sale!
Variant B: Black Friday Sale
Variant C: Black Friday Sale! Get 20% off
Variant D: Finish your holiday shopping early: Black Friday Sale

6. Direct Callout

Although it may not seem like a huge change, addressing your audience in the second-person (you) can make your message feel more personal and relevant. Find out if this tonal switch leads to higher CTR.

Variant A: 20% off sale
Variant B: Take advantage of your special 20% offer
Variant C: Just for you: 20% off coupon

All plans have access to A/B Testing improvements. Advanced A/B testing is available on our Professional and Enterprise Plans. Visit our documentation for guidance on how to use this new feature.

Want to learn more about A/B testing? View our deep dive webinar on incorporating testing to optimize your messaging and increase user engagement and conversions.