How donor-centric copy affects email acquisition
National Breast Cancer Foundation
The National Breast Cancer Foundation's mission is to provide help and inspire hope to those affected by breast cancer through early detection, education, and support services.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 10/05/2016 - 10/14/2016
The National Breast Cancer Foundation was giving away a free eBook, What Every Woman Needs To Know during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. They featured this eBook on their Breast Cancer Awareness Month page, with a form right on the page to download it.
The team at NBCF hypothesized that using copy that addressed the reader directly would increase email acquisition rate. They created a treatment that personalized each element: rather than “Get the free breast health guide”, the treatment offered the visitor the chance to “Get your free breast health guide”. Additionally, they revised the paragraph copy to show how the content of the eBook allows the visitor to be proactive about their own health. Finally, they added the value proposition element of “free” into the call-to-action.
They launched an A/B test to determine a winner.
Research Question
Will donor-centric copy increase the number of emails acquired?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Original | 3.0% | ||
| T1: | Personalized | 2.9% | -5.4% | 53.7% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 80,585 in order to be valid. Unfortunately, the required sample size was not met and a level of confidence above 95% was not met so the experiment results are not valid.
Key Learnings
The treatment produced no statistical lift or decrease in email acquisition—in short, it made no difference. This revealed a few key insights:
- It’s possible that visitors who were going to download this eBook were highly motivated and the slight changes in copy were not enough to affect that initial motivation.
- It’s possible that the copy changes were too slight, and need a more radical treatment.
- The copy may not be the primary factor affecting email acquisition—it may be location on the page.
This prompts future tests to see how the eBook can be better leveraged for name acquisition.