Does an email sent from an individual produce a higher open rate than an email sent from an organization?
CRISTA Ministries
Experiment Summary
Ended On: 11/14/2018
Traditionally during the Global Gift Guide campaign, emails are sent from World Concern. In an effort to increase the volume of people who open the emails being sent, we hypothesized that an email sent from a person rather than the organization might result in higher open rates. To test this, we developed a treatment email that was sent from Jacinta Tegman. The sender was the only variable that was different for the email; all other email content remained consistent with the control.
Research Question
Can we increase open rates of an email by sending from a person rather than an organization?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Open Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Organizational Sender | 7.2% | ||
| T1: | Personal Sender | 9.9% | 38.2% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 798 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 41,750, 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:
38.2% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
By sending emails from a person rather than an organization, we were able to increase open rates by 38%. People are more motivated to engage with people, not organizations. When a person sees that an email is from an individual, it automatically feels authentic and personal. Emails from organizations usually signify it is a marketing email, or that the organization is wanting something. This leads to lower levels of engagement.
Getting more people to open the email is just the first step in the conversion process. The more people we are able to get to open the email, the more we are able to get to read the content and potentially convert and give. This personal approach in email is a method to continue to test all the way through the email content to see the full impact that it can have on donor conversion.