How the presence of a privacy statement affects email acquisition
Harvest Ministries
Harvest Christian Fellowship exists to bring Christians closer to God and to bring nonbelievers to a saving relationship with Him by showing how God's Word and faith in Him are applicable and relevant to everyday life.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 06/02/2016 - 06/16/2016
Harvest has a daily devotional from Greg Laurie. On the sign-up page for this devotional, there is a privacy statement under the form fields that reads “We take privacy seriously and hate spam, so we’ll carefully protect your e-mail address.” While this statement is meant to give a person peace of mind that their information is secure and safe, we questioned if this copy actually created anxiety in someone’s mind when they came to sign-up. Would this present an element of friction rather than eliminate it? We did a split test on this page of the control vs a treatment where we simply removed that privacy statement.
Research Question
Does the privacy statement cause friction in the sign-up process?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | With privacy statement | 27.1% | ||
| T1: | Without privacy statement | 18.1% | -33.3% | 99.1% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 175 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 682, 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
× 33.3% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
Our hypothesis that the privacy statement possibly created friction in the sign-up process was wrong. The control, with the privacy statement, had an increase in email sign-ups by 33.3%. Their is a mental cost (friction) associated with a person giving their personal information to an organization. The privacy statement in this sign-up process alleviated that cost. People want to know that their information is safe and secure when they give it to us.