How first-name personalization affects email engagement
National Breast Cancer Foundation
The National Breast Cancer Foundation's mission is to provide help and inspire hope to those affected by breast cancer through early detection, education, and support services.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 10/01/2016 - 11/28/2016
National Breast Cancer Foundation had a recommendation that they start including first and last names on their email capture forms. Since this would take some development work to update all of their forms, they wanted to see if it made a difference in email engagement.
They had enough names on their list who had first names (from other sources) that they were able to run a test on a post-campaign email. This email had two calls to action—a donation ask and a Facebook share link. They split the file between the emails that had no personalization and the emails that had personalization and measured the results.
Research Question
Will personalization increase email engagement?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Click Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | No Personalization | 0.19% | ||
| T1: | With Personalization | 0.72% | 270.1% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 1,207 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 29,389, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.
Flux Metrics Affected
The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:
270.1% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The segment of the file that had personalization had a 270.1% increase over the emails with no first names. This told NBCF that while overall engagement was still lower than they had liked, it was well worth it to update their email capture forms and start collecting first and last names along with the emails.
Based on this data, they planned an additional test to see how asking for first and last name affected email signup rates.