What’s In A Name?

Humans are superheroes at being lazy.

If we want to spin it to our virtue, we can say our brains have evolved to find the simplest and most resource-efficient manner in which to complete essential survival tasks.

But really, it’s all about conserving energy for things that are more fun – like sleeping.

It’s truly staggering how far our laziness can go… right down to filling out forms on web pages.

According to age-old marketing lore, asking for more information has a negative impact on conversions. Last name, business phone number, company, even one tiny extra checkbox: according to studies, these all trigger an ‘extra effort!’ alarm in our monkey brains.

By how much? No one was saying – there have been no studies, no scientific tests, no lab monkeys.

So, here at Convertri, we wanted to find out for ourselves. (Sans monkeys. We’re a cruelty-free conversion company.)

Methodology

Just about the simplest you can get:

1. Create two opt-in pages.
2. Put a form on each: one asking for an email address, the other asking for an email address plus a name.
3. Throw some traffic at them and see what happens.

The only difference between the pages was that one extra form field.

They were promoted using copies of the same ad and targeting on Facebook, the copy and imagery used on each page was identical, and the campaign ran for 5 days to help iron out any potential differences caused by timing.  Maybe people who don’t mind giving their name are all vampires and only come out at night?  Unlikely, but we guarded against it.  For YOU, dear reader.

Take a look for yourself.

The Opt-in Pages

Variant A (email only):

Variant B (email + name):

Not a lot between them, right? So how much of a difference would it really make?

The Results

…About $0.56’s worth, that’s how much.

Both pages ended up getting between 400 and 450 hits from the traffic we threw at it via our Facebook ad.

For you number-crunchers, here’s the conversion statistics:

Variant A: 9.5%, cost per lead $1.69

Variant B: 7.1%, cost per lead $2.25

That right there means it’s significant at a 90% level. Which is to say, there’s a 90% chance that Variant A won because it’s genuinely better at converting prospects, and a 10% chance it was  pure dumb luck. So, if it doesn’t happen again under laboratory conditions we’ll each eat our stylish collection of hats.

It also meant that asking for a name as well as an email address earned us 25% fewer leads – and cost $0.56 more, because we got less of them. We spent the exact same amount of money per ad, but ended up with less bang for our buck with Variant B.

On the surface, that looks like pretty terrible news. Campaign-sinking, Dwayne-Johnson-flying-in-to-rescue-it-off-a-rooftop kind of terrible.

And then we asked… is it?

What Does it Mean?

There’s only one reason anyone would ask for extra information: it’s valuable.

The marketer thinks the lead magnet is more valuable than the time the prospect takes to enter it. The prospect counters with ‘nah’. This is what causes the drop in conversions.

It could be that a name will let the marketer personalise a later sales pitch, thus increasing conversions: or it could give them an evening telephone number or alternative email, increasing the chances their message won’t be missed.

But – no one seems to be asking, how valuable is all this information? Can anyone put it in numbers?

Believe me, we set forth our team of intrepid researchers to find out: but they could find no evidence of any studies being done on how much a name or another telephone number increased the lifetime – or initial – value of a lead.

This is possibly because it’s really, really difficult  to measure unless you’re a big business or have a budget devoted to such things. A name is perhaps more valuable to a life insurance company than a paper manufacturer. Or, an evening telephone number might be good info for an attorney specialising in vampire law but not ideal for garlic and mirror salesmen.

(This is just an example – as we all know, garlic and mirrors are more of an MLM thing.)

In short, it depends on what niche you’re in, what you’re selling and how you’re selling it.

So, is asking for your prospect’s name worth an extra $0.56? If you’re in telephone or face-to-face sales, almost certainly yes. Using a customer’s name personalises the experience, and leads to more conversions.

If you have a simple ebook offer, the sales process isn’t  likely to be long enough to warrant it.

What’s Next?

The key takeaway here is to stop thinking of extra form fields as add-ons that cost you conversions.

Instead, imagine you’re buying data.

Your lead will cost more if you want extra information – so only ask for it when you’re sure that extra information will earn you more profit in the long run.

If it ultimately means nothing to you, you’ll be better off leaving it out – even if you’re really curious what their last name is.