How a tangible reason to give impacted instant donor conversion
Buckner International
Buckner International is a global ministry dedicated to the transformation and restoration of the lives we serve. We are a Christ-centered organization that delivers redemptive ministry to the most vulnerable from the beginning to the ending of life.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 12/12/2018 - 12/28/2018
Buckner International had been running their 7 Scriptures offer for well over a year and a half. The offer had been able to acquire email subscribers at a relatively inexpensive cost but had failed to convert them instantly to a donor. The average instant donor conversion had hovered around 0.17% most of the time.
Buckner has a special program named Shoes for Orphan Souls that provides new shoes for children in need. We decided to create a radical redesign of the donation page and focus on the Shoes program instead of Buckner as a whole. Our belief was that a more tangible reason to give would be more appealing to visitor that had never heard of the organization before?
Research Question
Will a Shoes for Orphan Souls appeal convert more donors than the existing Buckner International-focused offer?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Control | 0.00% | ||
| T1: | Shoes Treatment | 2.1% | 100.0% | 99.8% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 173 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 897, 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
× 100.0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The Shoes for Orphans Souls treatment resulted in a 2.1% instant donor conversion rate after two weeks of running. The gifts were coming in at a steady amount which was a strong indicator of a good offer. We did not receive a gift for the control in this time period but, giving the historical average of 0.17%, this is not really surprising. We would have to run the experiment for nearly another month to potentially see a gift. Given the importance on focusing on donor acquisition, we decided to roll out the treatment as the new winner for all audiences and then create more experiments to further build on these results.