The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate

How a less formal version of a sender’s title impacts open rate

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate are a Roman Catholic congregation of priests and brothers founded after the French Revolution by St. Eugene De Mazenod to work among the poor. Today there are nearly 4,000 missionaries working in more than 60 countries around the world.

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 10/21/2019

The Missionary Oblates utilize the leader, Father David Uribe, as their primary sender. In general, they tend to use his formal title in their email envelop since that is what many Catholics are use to seeing. However, we had a hypothesis that a less formal sender name could increase opens so we decided to test that concept.

Research Question

We wanted to see if a more personal sender name would increase opens.

Results

 Treatment NameOpen RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Fr. David P. Uribe, O.M.I. 33.2%
T1: Fr. David 34.7%4.6% 100.0%

This experiment has a required sample size of 7,395 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 63,933, 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:

    4.6% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The less formal version of Father David’s title (“Fr. David”) resulted in a 4.6% increase in open rate. This would suggest the formality of his full title may be turning off potential readers. However, this is a concept that needs to be tested over multiple emails to ensure it isn’t a temporary bump in opens.


Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #17558

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