How increasing the urgency of a banner appeal during a high urgency campaign affects recurring donations
Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family is a global Christian ministry dedicated to helping families thrive. We provide help and resources for couples to build healthy marriages that reflect God's design, and for parents to raise their children according to morals and values grounded in biblical principles.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 03/15/2023 - 03/30/2023
We wanted to know how adding urgency to a banner appeal that has traditionally been run during high-urgency campaigns would impact recurring donor rates. The control presents an opportunity to begin your donation on the banner but is supported by generic copy that lacks urgency and does not communicate why someone should give and why they should give now.
We wanted to strengthen the appeal with a treatment that conveys the urgency of the problem in the copy and supports that urgency with a dynamic countdown timer that informs visitors how many monthly donors were still needed to meet the goal … and thus confront the problem.
Research Question
We believe that adding urgency to a banner appeal during a high-urgency campaign will increase recurring donor rates by more clearly expressing the need for the prospect to respond to the appeal and to do so now.
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 0.08% | |||
| T1: | With Count | 0.11% | 34.6% | 97.3% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 89,742 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 227,947, 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:
0% increase in traffic
× 34.6% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
After running this experiment for 12 days, we were able to validate our hypothesis that adding urgency to a banner appeal during a high-urgency campaign would increase recurring donations, producing a 34.6% lift (with a 97% level of confidence) over the control.
For mobile visitors, which made up 72% of total users who entered this experiment, we observed a 66% lift in recurring gifts, with a 99% level of confidence.
Over an 11-month period, with outlier gifts over $1,000 removed, the treatment will produce roughly $13,000 additional revenue, showing the importance of using strong, urgent copy during fundraising campaigns—even in supporting elements outside of appeal emails.
We believe that by calling out the problem and indicating how many more gifts were still needed to hit the goal, we were able to make the appeal more tangible and urgent in the minds of potential donors.
Going forward, we will suggest the high-urgency approach as the control and may consider other ways to improve the appeal, such as highlighting a more specific impact or outcomes achieved from the donor’s contribution.