FamilyLife

How Asking Donors for a Donation Amount Based on Their Prior Giving Impacted Donor Conversion During a High Urgency Campaign

Experiment ID: #93751

FamilyLife

FamilyLife® has been committed to helping individuals find biblical help for their marriage and family relationships. Through the Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways, FamilyLife Today® radio broadcasts, The Art of Marriage® video event, and the many other resources and content, God has used FamilyLife to restore hope for millions of couples and transform their lives.

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 05/10/2022

Live Action is a pro-life organization that uses online content and breaking-news stories to change hearts and minds on abortion and reveal abortion’s impact on everyone involved. During their 5-day Spring Monthly Donor High Urgency Campaign, Live Action wanted to see if they could increase donor conversion by asking each donor for a specific donation amount that was based on their prior giving history. Donors receiving this treatment would be thanked for their gift and told that instead of that amount, they could have an even greater impact by giving this new amount on an ongoing basis as monthly donors.

The Control version would say we needed 250 new monthly donors by midnight on April 30th. The treatment version would use a chart of standards AND the donor’s prior gift to calculate a giving amount and donor goal. Example:

Friend of Life, this is why I’m looking for 100 donors to step forward and give $10 by Saturday, April 30th. Can you be one of these donors who saves lives every single day? I know you have given as much as $10 in the past, but today I’m not asking for that much this one time. Instead, would you consider giving just 10 to start your monthly partnership? 2,300 babies face death every day.

We hypothesized that this approach that combined a chart of standards AND donors prior to giving history would increase conversion. We ensured that the customized giving amount would push to the donation page and prepopulate the donor form.

Research Question

We believe that asking donors for a donation amount based on their prior giving will increase donor conversion.

Design

C: Control
T1: Treatment #1

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Control 1.4%
T1: Treatment #1 1.5%6.4% 21.2%

This experiment has a required sample size of 135,151 in order to be valid. Unfortunately, the required sample size was not met and a level of confidence above 95% was not met so the experiment results are not valid.

Key Learnings

Unfortunately, due to the small sample size, we were not able to approach statistical reliability. However, we did validate this approach with the lapsed donor file during the same campaign.

People primarily give to people, not organizations or causes. By reminding the donor of their last gift and talking about how this new amount could extend the impact of their generosity further, we increased donor conversion. We will update this analysis with a breakdown of the reactivation rates by donor segment (broadbase and midlevel) to see if this approach had a greater impact on one audience over another.

We will also take every opportunity we can to give donors tangible appeals that are directly linked to their history of support and relationship with the organization.


Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #93751

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.