How the context of the “click” impacts email acquisition
Alliance Defending Freedom
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 03/12/2018 - 03/26/2018
Alliance Defending Freedom had run through a series of experiment with their most recent offer, a statement of belief surrounding their upcoming Supreme Court case. We had been able to improve email acquisition significantly by testing into this offer; the next step was to see if we could further reduce acquisition costs by optimizing the ads being shown.
The current ads were relatively generic and focused on “getting more information;” there was a soft call to action regarding “what you can do” but nothing specific was mentioned. We had the hypothesis that we could drive more motivated traffic by specifically identifying that the visitor would be asked to “take action” when they clicked. Since we were optimizing for clicks, it seemed that this would lead to an audience that was better aligned to the goal of the page.
Research Question
Will a more action-oriented ad be able to increase email acquisition rates?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | "Get More Information" Ad | 1.0% | ||
| T1: | Action-Oriented Ad | 2.2% | 115.3% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 841 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 35,499, 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
× 115.3% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The more action-oriented Facebook ad was able to increase the number of emails acquired by 115%. Our initial fear with this approach was that this style of ad would get less visitors to click on it which would, in turn, increase the acquisition costs. However, we also saw that the action-oriented ad was about to also increase the number of clicks by 22%.
This is a good demonstration on the power of clarity. When we were purposefully vague on the purpose of the landing page, people were less likely to click and convert because they did not know what they were being driven to do. By adding the clarity, we were able to drive not only a larger audience but a better motivated audience, one that aligned the primary goal of the page.