How adding the organization name and removing the sender’s last name affects cultivation email open rate
Experiment ID: #205138
Luther Seminary
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 08/24/2026 - 08/24/2026
Luther Seminary is a theological seminary that educates and equips Christian leaders for ministry. As part of its donor cultivation program, Luther Seminary sends email communications to members of its housefile to maintain engagement and strengthen relationships over time.
In this experiment, Luther Seminary tested a different approach to the sender name used on a cultivation email. The control presented the sender as “Jill Kane, Luther Seminary,” while the treatment used “Jill, Luther Seminary.”
The treatment was designed to balance two goals within the sender field: clearly identifying the organization behind the email while making the individual sender feel more personal and familiar. By removing the sender’s last name but retaining “Luther Seminary,” the treatment preserved organizational recognition while presenting the sender in a more conversational way.
The experiment was designed to determine whether this combination of organizational identification and a more informal individual name would increase engagement with the cultivation email among members of Luther Seminary’s housefile.
Research Question
We believe that using “Jill, Luther Seminary” instead of “Jill Kane, Luther Seminary” would increase email engagement because retaining the organization name would help recipients immediately recognize the sender, while removing the last name could make the message feel more personal and relational.
Design
C: Control
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Results
| Treatment Name | Open Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 14.2% | ||
| T1: | Treatment #1 | 14.8% | 4.6% | 93.4% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 22,667 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 39,922, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The treatment, “Jill, Luther Seminary,” produced a 14.8% open rate compared with 14.2% for the control, “Jill Kane, Luther Seminary.” This represented a 4.6% relative increase in open rate at 93.4% confidence. Although the experiment exceeded the required sample size, the open-rate result did not quite reach the 95% confidence threshold. Among recipients who opened the email, click performance was essentially unchanged. The treatment generated a 2.7% click rate compared with 2.8% for the control, a 2.9% relative decrease with only 15.2% significance. This difference was not meaningful. Why we think it happened: The directional increase in opens suggests that shortening the sender name to “Jill” while retaining “Luther Seminary” may have made the sender feel slightly more personal or familiar without sacrificing organizational recognition. The click data also suggest that the sender-name treatment primarily affected whether someone opened the email, not how they engaged with the content after opening.