Email Copy Tested How adding urgency increased clickthrough rate by 15%

Background: This email was sent to the MarketingExperiments list of about 85,000 marketers informing them about an upcoming Web clinic. Goal: To increase email clickthrough. Primary Research Question: Which messaging will generate the highest clickthrough rate: urgent or non-urgent? Approach: A/B Split

Experiment ID: Internal Urgency Email Test Location: MECLABS Research Library

Research Notes:

Experiment: Background

Experiment: Control

While the control has many of the elements of an effective email, the reader has no urgent reason to click the call to action.

Control

Experiment: Treatment

To produce an element of urgency in the email, we simply added 3 words to the bottom of the email: *Limit 1,000 attendees

Treatment

Experiment: Side-by-side

Control

Treatment

Version Delivered Emails CTA Clicks* CTR Rel. diff Stat. Conf

Control (No Urgency) 44,225 354 0.80% - -

Treatment (Urgency) 44,079 407 0.92% 15.4%

15.4% Increase in clickthrough rate The treatment generated 15.4% higher clickthrough than the control

What You Need to Understand: By adding a level of authentic urgency, the treatment out-produced the control in clickthrough rate by 15.4%.

*Primary call-to-action clicks only

Experiment: Results

95%