How adding a brand name in the sender line affects clickthrough rate
NextAfter
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 03/01/2016 - 03/07/2016
NextAfter sent an email promoting their new eBook “Turning Likes Into Donors” to a rented email list of nonprofit development professionals. The email was sent from Tim Kachuriak, and meant to look like a personal email. However, we wondered — if one of the recipients of the email wasn’t familiar with Tim, would they be likely to open and click the email? We developed a test that added “NextAfter” to the sender line to give the recipient better clarity in regards to the sender and launched an A/B test.
Research Question
Will adding a brand name to the sender line increase clickthrough rate?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Click Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Just Name | 1.3% | ||
| T1: | Name and Organization | 0.99% | -20.7% | 92.4% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 12,627 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 20,696, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The added brand name reduced clickthrough rate by 20.7%. This shows that the presence of a brand name actually decreases the likelihood that the user will engage. This may be because the brand is as unknown as the name. This experiment also may suggest that people are more willing to engage with a name they don’t know, but not if it’s evident that they are being marketed to.