NextAfter

Will an even more personal tone and approach increase engagement?

Experiment ID: #29639

NextAfter

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 03/31/2020

Twice a month we send a ‘digest’ email that shares a variety of fundraising resources and research we’ve produced lately. Our emails are typically written in first person and quite ‘human’ and personal. In the week leading up to this digest, I shared a video of me shooting on a LittleTikes hoop in my backyard on LinkedIn that got a TON of engagement even though that’s not what I post and it’s not really the ‘personal’ social channel (assumption) and wondered what an even more ‘me’ focused email in terms of approach and personal tone would do with our audience.

In this case, we added a few short paragraphs talking about my personal life and even linked to my son, my dog, and myself shooting hoops in the backyard. Things that don’t really have any utility or value for the reader in terms of fundraising resources or ideas.

Research Question

Will an even more personal tone and approach increase engagement?

Design

C: Personal
T1: Extra Personal

Results

 Treatment NameClick RateRelative DifferenceConfidence
C: Personal 2.6%
T1: Extra Personal 3.9%53.2% 100.0%

This experiment has a required sample size of 1,305 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 15,932, 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:

    53.2% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

The even more personal tone led to an increase in clicks of 53.2% and indicates that people are fine with even more personal communication. Now some of the links had no ‘business value’ in terms of driving course signups or email series subscriptions and we did see a slight decline in conversion (11.2%) but it was not significant (47.9%) so it appears the more personal approach had no real difference on conversion although that is something to look at it future extra personal tests.

In addition to the increased engagement, we saw a slight (but also not significant) decline in unsubscribe rate which again hints that people don’t hate more personal emails. We also saw 186.5% increase in replies which was interesting and a great way to engage with our subscribers and followers (one person even offered me a Daddy Saddle toy for my son…). This shows quite clearly that when we communicate as a human in more personal way it can lead to more engagement and conversations which is part of the goal of email.

Overall, this approach requires more testing as the increased clicks and replies is great but ideally we could also see a lift in actions and conversions.


Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #29639

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.