# Subscriber's name in a birthday email preheader: +9% opens

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Email (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Personalization, Preheader
- Date shared: 2015
- Test run by: [Apollo Education Group](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/apollo-education-group/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/ab-testing-for-education-group
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/apollo-birthday-email-name-in-preheader/

Adding the subscriber's first name to the preheader of a birthday email lifted open rate by 9%. Apollo Education Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, ran this test on emails to its students and alumni, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study. The first run of the test did poorly, and the win came when the team ran it again months later.

## Result

**+9% opens**

- Open rate: +9% for the version with the name in the preheader.
- This was the retest. An earlier run of the same test did not do well, so the result was not consistent across sends.
- Clicks and later actions were not reported for this test.

## Control

A birthday email to students and alumni with a standard preheader, the short preview line shown next to the subject line in the inbox.

## Variant

The same birthday email with the subscriber's name added to the preheader text.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- On phones and in webmail inboxes like Gmail and Yahoo, the preheader is one of the few lines people see before opening, so a name there is easy to notice.
- A name makes a goodwill email like a birthday note feel addressed to the reader rather than sent to a list.
- The mixed first result suggests timing, list mix or chance can swing small personalization tests, which is why the team retested.

## Caveats

The first run of this test lost and only the retest won, and no sample size or significance was shared. The audience was existing students and alumni, not prospects.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we add the subscriber's first name to the preheader of a triggered email, then more people will open it because the inbox preview will look personal.
- Primary metric: Open rate
- Guardrail: Click-through rate
- Guardrail: Unsubscribe rate
- Guardrail: Spam complaints
- Who should test it: Schools, membership groups and lead-gen businesses that send triggered or lifecycle emails and have clean first-name data. Skip it if many records have missing or messy names, since a blank or wrong name will hurt more than help.

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Credit: Apollo Education Group ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/apollo-birthday-email-name-in-preheader/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.