Media Research Center

How the email capture offer affects donation conversion rate

Experiment ID: #11604

Media Research Center

The Media Research Center (MRC) is the nation’s premier media watchdog. The sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 08/05/2013

As part of a email acquisition campaign, the Media Research Center ran visitors through a six question survey. The goal was to educate the visitors on the problems associated with the liberal media.  At the end, they were offered a premium in exchange for their email address.  After a successful name conversion, they were then led to a contextualized donation opportunity.

The quizzes had proven to be a good engagement tactic in past campaign but the question remained for what would make the best premium offer to get visitors to give both their name and, eventually, a gift.

Research Question

Which email acquisition offer will lead to the greatest number of donors acquired on the follow on donation page?

Design

C: Petition
T1: Free Notable Quotables PDF
T2: Free "I'm Not a Liberal" Bumper Sticker

Results

 Treatment NameConv. RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Petition 0.15%
T1: Free Notable Quotables PDF 0.19%23.8% 51.5%
T2: Free "I'm Not a Liberal" Bumper Sticker 0.54%249.9% 96.5%

This experiment has a required sample size of 1,506 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 26,636, 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
× 249.9% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The elements of this experiment dealt with the best method to capture email addresses.  However, the long term goal of the email capture was the eventual conversion to donors.

What we discovered is that the bumper sticker offer (which asked for a home address on the email capture page) actually drove a higher motivated audience to the donation page.  Despite lowering the click through traffic volume by 25% compared to the other treatments, by getting their address on the previous page and giving them a tangible premium, we made the follow-on donation ask more appealing.  As a result, we experienced a 250% increase in conversion rate.


Experiment Documented by Tim Kachuriak
Tim Kachuriak is Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer of NextAfter.

Question about experiment #11604

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.