Media Research Center

How a positive subject line affects open rates

Experiment ID: #2249

Media Research Center

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 09/24/2015 - 09/26/2015

As part of an effort to increase engagement in their moneybomb campaign, the Media Research Center wanted to discover what messaging tone would best engage their audience. The idea was to send two different subject lines to 20% of their audience and then send the best performing line to the remaining 80%.

The previous emails had utilized a negative tone in the subject line as a way of introducing the “threat” associated with the campaign. We had the hypothesis that a positive tone would actually resonate more with constituents so we decided to test it.

Research Question

Does a positive subject line increase the constituent’s engagement with the email over a negative subject line?

Design

C: Concerned about the future
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T1: I have hope
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Results

 Treatment NameOpen RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Concerned about the future 11.0%
T1: I have hope 13.0%17.9% 100.0%

This experiment has a required sample size of 2,099 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 64,240, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.

Flux Metrics Affected

The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:

    17.9% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The positive subject line increased the open rate by 17.9% compared to the more negative tone. This increased open rate led to a 26.5% increase to the number of visits to the website.

This test allowed us to increase the overall open rate of the email while teaching us an important fact about the email file. The “fear of loss” can be a powerful motivator but there are times where a more inspirational message can be even more motivating.


Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #2249

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.