A Reinforcement-Learning-Enhanced LLM Framework for Automated A/B Testing in Personalized Marketing

Abstract: For personalized marketing, a new challenge of how to effectively algorithm the A/B testing to maximize user response is urgently to be overcome. In this paper, we present a new approach, the RL-LLM-AB test framework, for using reinforcement learning strategy optimization combined with LLM to automate and personalize A/B tests. The RL-LLM-AB test is built upon the pre-trained instruction-tuned LLM. It first generates A/B versions of candidate content variants using a Prompt-Conditioned Generator, and then dynamically embeds and fuses the user portrait and the context of the current query with the multi-modal perception module to constitute the current interaction state. The content version is then selected in real-time through the policy optimization module with an Actor-Critic structure, and long-term revenue is estimated according to real-time feedback (such as click-through rate and conversion rate). Furthermore, a Memory-Augmented Reward Estimator is embedded into the framework to capture long-term user preference drift, which helps to generalize policy across multiple users and content contexts. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed RL-LLM-ABTest over existing A/B testing methods, including classical A/B testing, Contextual Bandits, and benchmark reinforcement learning approaches on real-world marketing data.