How to Create and Use a Control Target Group

Control Target Groups allow you to compare how well a new initiative will perform compared to a previous set up. This could be useful for testing new dynamic content, a new special offer, or a new layout and styling.

To make this type of comparison, you could create a Target Group containing a random segment of recipients. Then, you could see how a Target Group might change and measure the effect compared to the rest of your recipients.

One way to create a Control Target Group is to use the fixed Person Data 'RANDOM'. RANDOM is a Fixed Person Data field that sets a random four-digit value between 0-1 for all new recipients in Agillic. This makes the RANDOM Person Data field ideal for testing purposes since all recipients can be selected at random and the same recipients can be re-used several times. New recipients will be included in the Control Target Group when they're created and are assigned a RANDOM value that matches your Control Target Group's Conditions.

If you'd rather select the recipients used in a Control Group yourself, you can create a Person Data field as a Boolean and import the value 'TRUE' to all recipients who you want to use for control purposes.

Once you've created a Control Target Group, you can use it as a Condition on Dynamic Block types, in other Target Groups as a Target Group Condition, or as a Condition on a Flow Step.

You can read more about testing on Control Groups here.

How to Create a Control Target Group Using the RANDOM Field

1. Log in to Staging.
2. Open the Data module.
3. Create a new Target Group.
4. Open the Conditions section for your new Target Group.
5. Click on the small '+' icon and select 'Insert Condition'.
6. Insert the following Condition: Person Data - RANDOM - Less than - 0.2 - Condition met. This Condition will find roughly 20% of all your recipients. The exact amount of recipients matching the Condition will change depending on the Agillic instance. If you want more or fewer recipients in your Control Target Group, you can always change the '0.2' to a higher or lower value.
7. Click 'Save'.
8. If you want, you could calculate the population of your Target Group on Staging and Production to know if your Control Target Group contains the desired amount of recipients.

Your Target Group is now ready to run tests with. 

A Control Target Group containing all recipients which have a RANDOM value less than 0.2

Suggested Next Steps

• All You Need to Know About Target Groups