How positioning match oriented language impacted recurring gifts
Canadian Taxpayers Federation
A not-for-profit citizen's advocacy group dedicated to lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.
Experiment Summary
Ended On: 04/26/2023
During a recurring gift campaign, we wanted to test which message would be more motivating to donors to upgrade from a one time to a recurring gift. On the control page, we highlighted that a matching gift was in place which would double their donation. For the treatment donation page, we went into more detail about the match and focused the value proposition more around doubling the impact of their monthly donation. We split traffic to each page 50/50 for the duration of the campaign.
Research Question
We believe that adding clarity around a matching gift campaign for recurring donors will achieve an increase in donor conversion.
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 42.7% | ||
| T1: | Treatment #1 | 31.4% | -26.5% | 89.6% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 139 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 191, and the level of confidence is not above 95% the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The key learnings from this experiment are that adding more clarity around a matching gift campaign for recurring donors did not achieve the expected increase in donor conversion. In fact, the treatment page resulted in a 26.5% decrease in donations with a statistical level of confidence just below the acceptable threshold. Therefore, further testing is necessary before making any definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of messaging related to matching gift campaigns for recurring donors. We learned that the match language—on its own—was less effective in converting donors than keeping the values-based language and mentioning the match as one additional incentive to give. In future experimentation, it may be helpful to focus on more targeted messaging and testing smaller changes in order to better understand the impact on donor behavior. Additionally, it may be worthwhile to test other types of incentives beyond matching gifts to determine which strategies are most effective in motivating donors to convert to recurring gifts.