How making a subject line personal to the reader impacts open rate
Live Action
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 03/09/2017 - 03/13/2017
Some of the content Live Action sends in their emails is story-based and about a particular person who they name and identify in the copy. For Live Action’s recent fundraising email, it was about a person named Emma. Normally they use the name of the person that the email is about in their subject line to give it a more personal approach. For this email, they wanted to test the motivation of the reader and see which subject line would get more opens and ultimately more clicks to their landing page. The two subject lines they tested were “Emma chose life” and “You saved a life”.
Research Question
Which subject line would motivate more people to open the email?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Open Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Emma chose life | 8.4% | ||
| T1: | You saved a life | 10.4% | 23.6% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 1,663 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 393,570, 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:
23.6% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The treatment subject line, “You saved a life” had a 23.6% increase in opens. Not only did this subject line significantly increase the open rate, it also got a 33% increase in clicks. What we can learn from this experiment is:
1. By saying “You” saved a life, it made the subject line personal to the reader. It also empowered them and caused intrigue into “how” they saved a life resulting in more people wanting to open the email and read it.
2. The treatment subject line reinforced the call-to-action for people to help save more lives. This resulted in more people clicking through to the donation page to give.