American Cornerstone Institute

How a premium impacted donor convertion

Experiment ID: #76491

American Cornerstone Institute

Experiment Summary

Timeframe: 11/12/2021 - 11/18/2021

American Cornerstone Institute wanted to find new ways to incentivize their email house file to make a donation. As part of their education survey instant donation page, they decided to test out including a free copy of the Little Patriots first children’s book with a donation of $25 or more. Since the donor audience is a bit older, the book was framed as a great way for them to impart this same curriculum to their children or grandchildren.

Research Question

We believe that offering a book premium for survey takers from the email house file will achieve increase donor acquisition.

Design

C: Control
T1: With Premium

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidenceAverage Gift
C: Control 20.6%$0.00
T1: With Premium 16.6%-19.5% 87.0%$0.00

This experiment has a required sample size of 717 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 859, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.

Key Learnings

After receiving over 150 donations, we found that the book premium did not improve statistically donor conversion–it actually seemed to have a negative impact (although that was not statistically significant.) Since this premium had incremental costs associated with it, we decided to end the experiment prior to it validating.

With an average instant donor conversion rate of 18.5%, the next logical step is to find ways to increase the value received from the donors rather than trying to getting more of them to give. The average instant donor conversion rate is normally between 1% to 4%. With this in mind, the next experiment will focus in increasing recurring donor acquisition.


Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #76491

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