How a radical redesign to an email appeal affects donor conversion
Experiment ID: #8706
Focus on the Family
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 01/12/2018 - 01/23/2018
Traditionally, Focus on the Family sends monthly email appeals that are branded and templates for their organization. They also feature an image or a video with a button for a call-to-action and include a signature of the email sender. They hypothesized that they might be able to increase engagement and conversion of their monthly appeal if they made the email look, feel and sound as if the sender personally sent the appeal himself. To do this, they developed a treatment that stripped the email of it’s branded template to make it look like a plain text email and also wrote the copy in a way that was more conversational. They split their email file in half and tested each version against each other.
Research Question
Would an email that looked, felt, and sounded more personal increase conversion?
Design
C: Traditional Appeal
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T1: Plain Text
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) ) )
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Traditional Appeal | 0.04% | ||
| T1: | Plain Text | 0.07% | 77.5% | 95.2% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 45,597 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 92,543, 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:
0% increase in traffic
× 77.5% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The treatment increased donor conversion by 77.5%. This significant increase in conversion can be attributed to the radical approach in testing.
By stripping the email of the organization-centric template and features and changing the tone of the message to be more conversational, we were able to make the email feel like a traditional email sent personally by the sender. People want to feel like they are being personally engaged and that the appeal is only written to them from Jim Daly. People give to people, not mass marketing machines. This test reinforces that idea.
Moving forward, we will test specific elements of this email to gain an even deeper understanding of what motivates people to give.