How a highly relevant, but low perceived exclusivity offer impacted donor conversion 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: 11/15/2019 - 12/09/2019
With the news cycle coverage focused around the impeachment of the president, Heritage wanted to test a news cycle focused offer to capitalize upon the market demand increase for information related to impeachment hearings and use this as an opportunity to generate new names, donors and dollars.
Research Question
Would the news cycle relevancy of the impeachment ebook improve names, donors and dollars raised over the recently minted control offer (the “socialism ebook”)?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | 9 Ways Offer Promotion | 0.04% | ||
| T1: | Impeachment Guide | 0.02% | -42.7% | 99.7% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 76,667 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 342,272, 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
× 42.7% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The experiment showed that the impeachment offer (or treatment) produced a decrease in donor conversion of 42.7% (LoC: 99.6%).
The ad, shown in The Daily Signal’s “Dear Reader” ad location produced a -27.8% (LoC: 100%) decrease in ad clicks, which compounded with a decrease in emails captured, which subsequently just meant the treatment offer could never catch up, ultimately decreasing overall results because the ad didn’t produce enough clicks relative to the control experiment.
Our suspicion is that the treatment offer, although relevant to the news cycle, was pretty pedestrian content to put behind a value exchange (email signup), because most of the content included within the document was already readily available around The Daily Signal’s website.
To capitalize upon new cycle demand, we need to improve the perceived value or exclusivity for the content (or offer) to take full advantage of the new demand in the marketplace.