Free investment kit vs best-selling book incentive: -45% conversion
Test run byMarketingExperimentsResearch publisher
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsSwapping a free New York Times best-selling book for a free investment research kit cut offer page conversion from 1.28% to 0.71%, so the book did 81% better.
MarketingExperiments (MECLABS) ran this 37-day A/B/C test for a financial research company.
It was one arm of a three-way test of incentives.
- Conversion to sale: 1.28% (control) vs 0.71% (kit), so the book incentive did 81% better. A clear loss for the kit.
- Sample: 12,424 vs 10,592 unique visitors, with 159 vs 75 sales.
- A third arm offered the kit on the offer page and the book at checkout. It reached 0.81% and also lost to the book alone.
The change
Only the free incentive changed: a research kit replaced the best-selling book.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The subscription offer page promised a free New York Times best-selling book as the sign-up incentive.
Variant
The same offer page promised a free investment research kit instead of the book.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A famous best-selling book is easy to picture and value. A research kit has to be explained before visitors know what it is worth.
- MarketingExperiments advises against incentives you have to sell, because selling the incentive competes with the main offer.
- The kit may have felt too close to the paid product, so it added little extra value.
Caveats: The test ran in 2008 and no confidence level was shared. The arms got unequal traffic, but the gap between 159 and 75 sales is large.
Who ran it
MarketingExperiments ran this test for a financial research company and published the results (MarketingExperiments). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on MarketingExperiments →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we offer a product-related bonus instead of a well-known general gift, then more visitors will subscribe because the bonus fits the product, unless the bonus is harder to value at a glance.
- Primary metric
- Paid sign-up conversion rate on the offer page
- Guardrails
- Cost of incentive per new customer
- Early cancellation or refund rate
- Revenue per visitor
- Who should test it
- SaaS and subscription businesses that use a free gift to close sign-ups. It fits when you have two incentives with clearly different perceived value; it matters less when the core offer already converts without one.
Questions
What makes a good sign-up incentive?
One people already understand and value without explanation.
Here a well-known best-seller beat a more relevant but less familiar research kit.
Should the incentive relate to my product?
Not always. Relevance helps only if visitors can quickly see what the gift is worth.
How do I compare incentives fairly?
Run them as separate arms at the same time on the same page, and judge them on paid conversion and incentive cost, not clicks.