How making the organization the actor of a Giving Tuesday donation page value proposition impacts donor conversion
KCBI
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 11/18/2022 - 11/29/2022
KCBI is a large Christian radio station in the DFW area with a worldwide listening audience. They wanted to see if donors were more motivated to give TO KCBI because of what KCBI would do with their gift or if they would be motivated to give because of what their GIFT would do THROUGH KCBI. So, which “hero” motivated more visitors to the donation page on Giving Tuesday to become donors.
Historically, they’ve tried to always emphasize the donor as the hero in their donation pages.
For the control, they emphasized in the headline and body copy the impact the donor would have by giving. In the treatment, they tweaked it slightly to emphasize how the impact is through KCBI. Examples include….
“You can give practical help and biblical truth this Giving Tuesday” vs “Give Practical Help and Biblical Truth this Giving Tuesday Through KCBI“
“By making a gift right now, you will be broadcasting the sounds of hope and the Good News of Jesus, as well as ensuring that practical help and biblical truth is carried out through our community…”
vs
“By making a gift to KCBI right now, you will help us broadcast the sounds of hope and the Good News of Jesus, as well as ensure that we provide practical help and biblical truth to our community…”
“Will you give right now?” vs “Will you give to KCBI right now?”
“Please step forward and make your special Giving Tuesday gift using the secure form below. You will have an eternal impact on the lives of others.”
vs
“Please step forward and make your special Giving Tuesday gift to KCBI using the secure form below. Your gift will enable us to have an eternal impact on the lives of others.”
We split the traffic 50/50 and ran it during their Giving Tuesday campaign that began a week early online. We hypothesized that the control page with the donor as the hero of the value proposition would have the greater conversion rate.
Research Question
We believe that making KCBI the hero of the value proposition on the Giving Tuesday donation page will decrease donor conversion
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 25.3% | |||
| T1: | KBCI Hero | 33.2% | 31.3% | 98.6% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 252 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 784, 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
× 31.3% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
To our surprise, the control donation page that made the donor the hero (actor) in the value proposition had a decreased donor conversion rate and our treatment making KCBI the hero of the page increased conversion by 31%. When looking at the traffic by segment, all segments favored the treatment over the control. In our analysis of the results, we looked to see if there were any large donations that may be skewing revenue and average gift results and found only a total of five gifts. Removing these gave us the following results:
Control (donor as hero):
- 98 donations, 24.7% conversion rate, $8,089 revenue, and $82.54 average gift
Treatment (KCBI as hero)
- 126 donations, $9,003.85 revenue, and $71.45 average gift.
This analysis did not change the level of confidence or the overall result. We still brought in approximately $1,000 in revenue on the treatment despite the lower average gift thanks to the higher donor conversion rate.
While our thinking has been that donors want to be the actor/hero, it is possible that the way KCBI emphasized this in their control body copy made it sound like the donor was doing “work.” The donor could have anxiety about “saving lives” “sharing the Gospel” etc. The treatment page made it clear that KCBI did these things through the donor’s gift.
More testing is needed to see the influence of a value proposition with KCBI as the hero outside of a unique campaign like Giving Tuesday. It is possible that the unique motivations of this day of giving influenced the results.