How adding a personalized monthly call out to staff donation pages affects recurring donor conversion rate
The Navigators
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 07/06/2022 - 07/15/2022
The Navigators recently ran experiment where they added a monthly call out to their main donation page. When they saw promising results through this experiment, we decided to run this same type of experiment on their staff pages. In an effort to increase monthly donations we drew attention to the monthly giving option on the donation page by adding a callout and adding a personalization. This personalization pulled in their first name in the call out so as to humanize the giving experience. Our hypothesis was that if we highlighted giving monthly as an option and we reminded the donor that they were in fact giving to a person, we would convert more monthly donors.
We tested this concept on a select group of staff members who were actively fundraising and were receiving a high amount of traffic on their pages.
Research Question
We believe that adding a personalized monthly call out for prospective staff donors will achieve a higher recurring donor conversion rate .
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 18.6% | $0.00 | ||
| T1: | Monthly Callout with First Name | 10.4% | -43.9% | 94.7% | $0.00 |
This experiment has a required sample size of 148 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 271, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
When looking at all recurring gifts acquired through this experiment we saw a 22% decrease in recurring gifts with a level of confidence of 66.5%. However, when examining a specific segment, new visitors, we saw a nearly valid decrease of 43.9% with a level of confidence of 94.6%. These were surprising results compared to what we experienced on the main donate page.
We concluded that:
- The main donate page’s callout was actually much more focused on the impact of the monthly gift “making disciplemakers” as opposed to just stating they should make a monthly gift like this callout.
- New site visitors may not be as swayed to see a specific person’s name on the callout.
- Adding the personalization in third person, i.e. “Support Joe”, may seem to organizationally-centric and could deter potential donors.
Our recommendation is to run this test again across all staff pages, change the statement so that it once again focuses on the value and impact of monthly giving, and change the personalization so that it reads “Support me/us.”