[Case Study] Does a Personalized Signature Drive More Email?
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- There are many ways to personalize an email that will help drive clicks
- In my case, using a plain signature created 78% more clicks than the version with a script signature and a headshot
- Test your headshot effectiveness with a trial audience to see if customers think you look professional
Hey, guys. How's it going? Matt Ackerson here, the founder of Growbo.com, as you may already know. In this video, I'm going to be presenting to you for the first time some original research and a case study, if you will, of whether or not you should implement an email signature line that is personalized.
So for example, should you include a photo of yourself in the signature line, and will that drive more clicks? Or perhaps you have seen some sales pages, for example, and they will have the founder’s signature, or the owner or whoever is the author of the product. Should you consider including that in your email subject line? Now, the results were actually really surprising, and I think you'll be surprised. So, let me just jump in here and show you what I'm talking about, and we'll go into the data.
Which produced 78% more clicks: plain signature or script signature plus headshot?
To give you a quick example, here's what I mean when I say that we personalized the signature line of emails that we were sending out. In this case, you can see that we included both my script signature and a picture of me. And in version B, the other version that we were testing with our regular weekly newsletter, it would just be this plain signature: "Keep hustlin', stay focused."
Version A
Version B
So, before I actually get into the data with you and show you which actually drove more clicks on average, what do you think would be the best version? Maybe pause the video, and think about it for a second. Which do you think would actually have the better results?
All right? All right. So, now let's go ahead and look at the data and see what the answer is.
On average, here's what it came out to be, and we tested this, so this is statistically significant. We counted well over 300 clicks for each in total. And you always want to do your own A/B testing just to be sure.
But if you're looking for a good starting point, what the data tells us is that conclusively, the version with the plain signature line that you can see here, drove on average of 73% more clicks compared to the signature line with the headshot and my script signature. That's not something that can be ignored. I mean, this is really conclusive. Again, this is statistically significant, over 300 clicks counted for each, I think actually closer to 400. And this is not just a 20% increase but 73%.
So, what can we interpret from this? Well one thing to think about is that maybe it would have worked better if we just used the headshot. Maybe if it was just the signature, maybe it would have worked better in that case. But it's really hard to ignore a 73% increase or decrease if we were using the signature with the script signature and the headshot, right? So going forward, we will not be using that version. And if you're looking for a starting point, I encourage you to use the plain signature as well.
But what if the issue was the headshot? Maybe it was the photo of me? I did a little investigation into this a while ago, where I actually signed up for this service and I did a test of the headshot. It's called photofeeler.com, if you wanna check it out for yourself. And you can order these kind of feedback tests where people will give you feedback and kind of rate you on these different metrics of--okay, does a photo make you look competent, likeable, influential?
In this photo, it was a little bit different, but what people said was (and this is actually not an up-to-date headshot, so a reminder for me to go out and get an updated headshot perhaps), but people were saying things like, "Well, I prefer if he looked directly at the camera. What's he looking off at? You know, maybe he looks a little young?"
Because this photo is actually about three years old at this point. So, I need to update it. Maybe I do look too young in it. Maybe I should take one with the beard, maybe that will help. And maybe dress a little bit differently, because people said it did look professional, but maybe people felt it was too fancy or something like that.
These are things to think about. But once again, you really can't ignore a 73% increase in the amount of average click-through rate. That's pretty compelling. So I encourage you to think about that with your next newsletter. In this case, simpler is better.
Actions you can take right now
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Until next time, my name is Matt Ack in the Matt hat delivering you your daily dose of Matt Hacks. And if you'd like me to consider answering a question that you have about your funnel or your digital marketing, be sure to leave a comment below or give me feedback on this video, and let me know, and I'll consider answering it in an upcoming video. Thanks a lot. I'll talk to you soon. Keep hustlin', stay focused.
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