How images in an email affect clickthrough rate
Dallas Theological Seminary
The DTS mission is, “to glorify God by equipping godly servant-leaders for the proclamation of His Word and the building up of the body of Christ worldwide.” They strive to help men and women fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, or more simply: Teach Truth. Love Well.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 04/22/2016 - 05/04/2016
Dallas Theological Seminary was promoting their newest online course on Genesis to their house file. Many of the people in their house file had already taken one of their first two courses.
Previous testing had shown that their prospects responded well to very personal invitations. However, they wanted to try a more graphical approach that presented the new course in a more dramatic way and gave the reader more to click on.
They created a treatment that inserted an image from the course into the copy (linked to the registration page) and put an image of Dr. Mark Bailey, the sender, next to his signature.
They split the file and sent an A/B email test to determine a winner.
Research Question
Will additional imagery increase clickthrough rate?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Click Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Personal text-based email | 7.4% | ||
| T1: | Email with imagery | 16.9% | 129.9% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 82 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 45,265, 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:
129.9% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
This tells us that when we are introducing a new course to our donors, we must be somewhat visual about it. Though previous testing had shown the power of a personal invitation, imagery can help attract attention and win more clicks and registrations.