How additional “personal” value proposition in advertising copy affects email acquisition rate
The Heritage Foundation
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 07/10/2017 - 07/25/2017
In addition to a 22% increase in petition signatures, there was a trailing (though not statistically significant) effect on donations as well.
This teaches us that 1) readers can’t get to the last inch of ad copy without getting through the first inches, and that 2) connecting an offer more closely with an audience’s values is a tool that should be used to build the need for an offer (through copy).
Research Question
Will additional, more personal copy increase email acquisition rate?
Design
Results
This experiment has a required sample size of 13,177 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 1,288,447, 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
× 22.0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The Heritage Foundation ran a campaign demanding that the Senate “do their job” and install judges in federal court vacancies. They wanted to provoke a powerful emotional response in their advertising, and developed two ad treatments to test against each other. The first stated the premise of the campaign clearly: there are 120 federal court vacancies that must be filled. It then continued to make an emotional appeal that the American people and the President had done their job, but the Senate refused to do theirs.
The treatment started with a first-person-plural statement: “We are more than a little frustrated right now.” It then went on to detail how things should work, as opposed to how they are currently (not) working. This brought a personal edge to the copy, which was intended to make it feel less like an ad and more like an actual Facebook post. They hypothesized that this would increase engagement, and when combined with the emotional value proposition, would produce a higher petition signature conversion rate.