How donor autonomy language on active donor impacts transactions
Experiment ID: #194482
A Public Media Organization
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 12/21/2024 - 12/31/2024
This experiment was conducted in partnership with WUNC, a North Carolina NPR station, during its year-end fundraising campaign. The primary goal of this study was to explore the impact of donor autonomy language on behavior and engagement.
The experiment focused on a series of five emails sent to an active segment of WUNC’s donor base. Each email aimed to evaluate whether emphasizing donor autonomy—language that reinforces a donor’s sense of choice and control over their giving—would influence donation rates and overall responsiveness.
To measure the effect, we created two variations of the emails. The control group received messages without any autonomy-focused language, while the test group received emails that intentionally incorporated phrases designed to highlight donor choice and empowerment.
Research Question
We believe that incorporating donor autonomy language in our fundraising emails targeted at the active donor segment will lead to an increase in donations. By emphasizing the donor’s sense of choice and control, we expect to empower recipients, making them feel more confident and motivated to give.
Design
C: Control
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Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 0.44% | ||
| T1: | Treatment #1 | 0.26% | -40.4% | 85.5% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 8,456 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 9,268, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The experiment demonstrated that incorporating donor autonomy language did not lead to improved conversion rates among active donors. Despite both the control and treatment emails generating the same number of clicks (42 each), the control group consistently outperformed the treatment group in donation conversions, achieving a 0.44% conversion rate compared to the treatment’s 0.26% conversion rate—a 40.4% decrease. The control group saw higher performance in all email sends except for the third email (as seen above), where the treatment briefly outperformed the control with 6 donations compared to 3. However, this isolated success was not enough to offset the overall underperformance of the treatment. These findings suggest that donor autonomy language, as tested in this campaign, may not resonate as strongly with active donors and could potentially detract from conversion effectiveness in this context. Further testing may be required to refine the messaging approach or explore other engagement strategies.