Franciscan University

How a personalized sender impacts open and click-through rates

Franciscan University

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 02/27/2025

Historically, the majority of Franciscan University’s email have come from the organization itself. They do not address the reader by name with a salutation, are written in a third-person tone, and do not come from a specific sender at the University. We hypothesized that personalizing this experience for the reader: addressing them by name in the opening, sending from a real person, and humanizing the email copy so it read like an email rather than a newsletter would increase opens and click-thru rate.

Research Question

We believe that a personalized sender for Franciscan University’s emails will achieve an increase in opens and click-thru rate because it humanizes the entire interaction—addressing the reader by name and writing from the perspective of a real person. because it humanizes the entire interaction—addressing the reader by name and writing from the perspective of a real person.

Design

C: Control

T1: Treatment 1

Results

	Treatment Name	Open Rate	Relative Difference	Confidence
C:	Control	13.0%
T1:	Treatment 1	17.4%	33.5%	100.0%

This experiment has a required sample size of 522 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 39,851, 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:

33.5% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The key learning from this experiment is that personalizing the sender for Franciscan University's emails had a significant impact on the open rates, resulting in a 33.5% increase in opens for all traffic with a 100.0% level of statistical confidence. This outcome suggests that humanizing the email interaction by addressing the reader by name and sending from a real person resonated positively with the recipients and encouraged them to engage more with the emails. Additionally, our second hypothesis is that this would increase click-thru rate as well as opens. While just below statistical validity, Franciscan also saw a 12% increase in click-thru rate with a 93.9% level of confidence. In future experimentation, it is advisable to continue personalizing the sender for Franciscan University's emails to maintain or even further improve the open and click-thru rates. However, it may be worthwhile to determine whether this approach results in the same effect on Faith and Reason emails—which users are more accustomed to receiving from the organization itself. Regularly testing and analyzing different tactics will provide valuable insights for optimizing email communications and achieving the desired outcomes.

Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #70378

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