# Ten $50 gift cards instead of twenty $25 cards: +31% sign-ups

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Lead form (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Incentive
- Test run by: [Response Capture](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/response-capture/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/a-b-testing/incentive-testing
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/response-capture-sweepstakes-prize-size/

Offering a chance to win one of ten $50 Amazon gift cards, instead of one of twenty $25 cards, brought in 31% more email sign-ups. Response Capture ran the test, and it was published as a MarketingExperiments case study. Both prize pools cost the same $500, so the lift came at no extra cost.

## Result

**+31% sign-ups**

- Email sign-ups rose 31% with the fewer, larger prizes.
- Prize cost was identical at $500, so the extra leads were free.
- Sample size, duration and confidence level were not shared.

## Control

Visitors were offered a chance to win one of twenty $25 Amazon gift cards in exchange for their email address.

## Variant

Visitors were offered a chance to win one of ten $50 Amazon gift cards instead. The total prize budget stayed at $500.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- People tend to judge a prize by its size more than by their odds of winning it.
- A $50 card may feel worth the effort of signing up, while $25 can feel small.
- Twenty winners versus ten is hard to picture, so the doubled prize value was probably the clearer signal.

## Caveats

The sample size, test length and confidence level were not shared. The test date is also not stated; the write-up was published in June 2016.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we offer fewer prizes of higher value for the same total budget, then more visitors will enter because a bigger prize feels more worth winning than better odds on a smaller one.
- Primary metric: Email sign-up conversion rate
- Guardrail: Lead quality or later engagement
- Guardrail: Unsubscribe rate in the first weeks
- Guardrail: Cost per lead
- Who should test it: Lead-gen businesses and SaaS companies that use giveaways to grow a list. It matters less if your audience is driven by the product itself rather than the prize, or if a giveaway attracts people who never become customers.

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Credit: Response Capture ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/response-capture-sweepstakes-prize-size/).
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.