Sending an A/B test email in a multi-flow email campaign

[Vlada_Prasolova]

Hi!
i have a rather complex marketing campaign on my hands and i don't know how best to approach it
my sales team wants to send an email promo to several groups of our customers at once + to test 3 different email texts on 1 of the groups (personal customers)

normally i would use the old smart campaign (send email), not the new one (email blast) and add choices in the flow:
if lead in list 1 - send email 1
if lead in list 2 - send email 2
....
if lead in list N - send email N

but i'm not sure how best to squeeze in the A/B test here

can i somehow add an A/B test just for email 1 which would be send to some part of my group 1?
how best to do it? will it affect the other groups i select for my campaign?

here i need to say that our database is full of duplicates that's why i always set up a flow with several emails in 1 campaign - just to make sure 1 lead does not somehow receive several emails when he shouldn't

it is wise in my case to try to attempt to use A/B test at all? i'm worried that it may somehow send several emails to my duplicate records

[Josh_Hill13]

Vlada,

There are a fair number of articles on using the Random Sample flow step to accomplish this. You can start here:
http://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/how-to-run-ab-email-tests-in-marketo-505/

Essentially what you want to do is have that Group 1 already split into a random set of static lists or even just a flow step:

Random Sample of Group 1: 20% ...

Smart List for Flow: if member of list, Groups 1a,b,c, 2, 3.

Send Email to Static List if Group 1a, 1b, 1c...Send Emails X, Y, Z
Send Email to if Group 2, Send Email Winner X
Send Email to if Group 3, Send Email Winner X

[Robb_Barrett]

How about an email test in an engagement program?