How increasing clarity in email copy affects donor conversion rate
Harvest Ministries
Harvest Christian Fellowship exists to bring Christians closer to God and to bring nonbelievers to a saving relationship with Him by showing how God's Word and faith in Him are applicable and relevant to everyday life.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 04/01/2016 - 05/02/2016
Harvest Ministries was sending a mid-month update on their fundraising appeal for the month. The offer was a book by Joni Earackson Tada. The control email highly incentivized the click by asking the reader to “find out why” the sender (Greg Laurie) admires Joni, the author of the book. While this might drive a lot of clicks, we’ve seen this approach drive much lower conversion rates, as those who click through are not as motivated to accept the offer.
We devised a treatment that moved some of that copy into the email, incentivizing the click by giving them a timely call-to-action to find out how to get their own copy of the book before Mother’s Day.
This treatment produced a 58.7% decrease in clickthrough rate, but we wanted to measure conversion on the following donation page to see if those that clicked had a higher motivation to complete the intended transaction.
Research Question
Will copy with a clearer call-to-action increase donor conversion rate?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Find out why | 5.7% | ||
| T1: | Get your copy | 8.9% | 55.1% | 93.8% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 480 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 1,236, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The clearer call-to-action in the email did produce a 55.1% lift in donor conversion. However, because the email drove much less traffic, the control won in terms of overall revenue.