Great Names Give Alike

Four hundred years after Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” we’ve settled on an answer: email marketing gold.

Adam Alter, a marketing and psychology professor at NYU, recently spoke to our team about people’s subconscious responses to seeing their names and even their initials:

“Psychologist Jesse Chandler and his colleagues found that people donate significantly more money to hurricanes that share their initials. So Roberts, Ralphs and Roses donated on average 260% more to the Hurricane Rita relief fund than did people without R initials. Also in 2005, people with K initials donated150% more to the Katrina relief fund, and in 2004 people with I initials donated 100% more to the Ivan relief fund.” (Source: The Monkey Cage)

Inspired by this finding, we tested whether name matching could inspire more generosity to the classroom requests listed on DonorsChoose.org. Over Valentine’s Day weekend, we emailed 500,000 donors with this poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Give to a teacher,
With the same name as you.

And then we showed the recipient a classroom request created by a teacher with the same last name.

For our control group, we ended the poem with “Give to a teacher, in a classroom near you” and showed the recipient a classroom request in their home state.

Some of our colleagues were skeptical, but the results eliminated any doubts: name-matched donors were nearly three times more likely to give to a classroom project! Name-matched donors also gave more generously — nearly three times as much as donors referred to a geo-targeted teacher. Best of all, many of these donors had lapsed (not made any donation in years) before the name-matching campaign re-activated them.

Responses to the email even got us some love on Twitter:

And we might have helped at least one donor complete her family tree:

While this was a fun experiment, we expect this is a tactic to use sparingly — a creative spin on an existing campaign. What other email marketing secrets have you unlocked?