# Donation email focused on one value point: all 4 versions lost

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Email (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Value proposition, Copy
- Date shared: 2016-02
- Test run by: [MECLABS Institute](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/meclabs-institute/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/consumer-reports-summit-live-report
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/consumer-reports-donation-email-single-value-focus/

Rewriting a Consumer Reports donation email to focus on a single reason to give made it worse: all four focused versions underperformed the original. MECLABS Institute ran this pre-test with Consumer Reports before a live test at MarketingSherpa Summit 2016, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study. The exact figures were shown only in images, so no percentages are given here.

## Result

**all 4 versions lost**

- Response: every one of the four treatments underperformed the control. This is a loss.
- Exact clickthrough and donation figures were not stated in the text.

## Control

A donation appeal email to Consumer Reports subscribers that mixed several reasons to give in one message.

## Variant

Four crowdsourced versions, each built around one reason to give: unbiased reporting, the personal impact of Consumer Reports, the quality of its research, or a fourth category the audience picked.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- Different donors give for different reasons, so focusing on one may have turned off people who cared about the others.
- The team thought the layout and structure of the new copy may have added friction.
- Donors may have been unclear on what member benefits they get, and none of the treatments explained that. The next test did.

## Caveats

Exact figures appear only in images on the source page and were not shared in the text. The copy was crowdsourced from blog readers, and sample size per version was not stated.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we focus our appeal email on one reason to act instead of several, then more people will respond because the message is clearer.
- Primary metric: Clickthrough rate to the donation or sign-up page
- Guardrail: Revenue per email sent
- Guardrail: Average gift or order value
- Guardrail: Unsubscribe rate
- Who should test it: Nonprofits and lead-gen businesses whose appeals list several benefits. This result suggests a broad audience may respond better to a mix, so be careful if your list contains many different kinds of supporters.

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Credit: MECLABS Institute ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/consumer-reports-donation-email-single-value-focus/).
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.