How using an authoritative figure in a dear reader impacts email acquisition
Reasons to Believe
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 04/20/2022 - 05/13/2022
RTB’s website is rich with blogs and content. Most of their traffic is driven by these blogs and articles. In order to maximize results from this traffic we wanted to add a dear reader at the end of the blog content to capture more names. We wanted to test how humanizing the dear reader by making it sound like it’s coming from an authority figure (Hugh Ross, founder and President) would impact email acquisition. We hypothesized that readers would respond more to seeing Hugh’s face and reading a message from him, especially since we were specifically targeting Hugh’s blogs.
Research Question
We believe that adding an authoritative figure to a dear reader for blog readers will achieve a higher email conversion rate .
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | Average Gift | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 0.88% | $0.00 | ||
| T1: | Treatment | 1.3% | 51.6% | 95.1% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 4,101 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 8,250, 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
× 51.6% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
Results of this experiment indicate that RTB’s audience are more likely to respond when hearing from a specific person rather from the organization. Humanizing messaging and using an authority figure has proven to be a viable strategy for RTB. This experiment resulted in a valid 62% increase in email acquisition with a level of confidence of 98%. Furthermore, people were more likely to give through the dear reader that came from Hugh. We saw a 197% increase in donor conversion rate with a level of confidence of 92% (not validated by a directional lift).