We recently ran a Helio test, on our own product, that provides insight for app builders. We found that people are 14% more likely to activate their account from a transactional email that includes the sender name and organization.
We tested 3 types of email invites for Helio across 12 unique audiences, from Marketing Managers and Creative Directors to UX Researchers and Graphic Designers. In each version, we tracked how many people would activate their account right away, and which one would convince them to provide their information upon sign-up.
Variation A
Our first email didn’t use any personal names at all, and simply relied on recognition of the account name.
Variation B WINNER
Our next iteration uses the account name as well, and adds the full name of the invite sender.
Variation C
The last email included the account name, full name of the invite sender, and the first name of the email recipient in the header.
Here’s what we found.
The emails that used the sender’s full name produced the most positive reactions.
Variations B & C had significantly greater positive reactions than Variation A, mainly in the area of feeling confident. We also asked participants what they need to see in an invite email to be convinced, and many mentioned they expect to see their co-worker’s full name before confidently clicking into an account invite. These participant expectations and preference for Variations B & C show that the sender’s full name is the most crucial piece of information in the invite email.
To make an email more trustworthy it should come from a legit website or commonly used email platform, with the senders full name
Marketing Manager
Variation B made participants more likely to activate their account.
Variation B, with the sender name and account name, resulted in the most participants using their first click to activate their account. Up to 14% more participants would immediately click the primary CTA in Variation B compared to the other variations. In Variations A & C, participants were more likely to click into alternate links to learn more about Helio before activating their account. This is an example of our best testing variation producing more immediate trust with the email, and our platform.
Participants trusted Variation B the most when asked to provide their personal information.
Our best testing email, Variation B, produced the most participants who said they would provide their full name upon sign-up. Up to 14% more participants said they’re likely to provide their own full name upon sign-up compared to the other 2 variations. This shows how the right email can have a lasting impact beyond the email action and into the platform itself.
Our main takeaways from this study:
- Variation B made participants more likely to click our primary CTA.
- Emails that used the sender’s full name produced the most positive reactions.
- Variation B, with the sender name and account name, did the best job of building trust with our platform.
With these signals, we’ve made the decision to implement Variation B as the new invite email for our Helio accounts. We hope that the proper use of the account name and the sender name in the email will encourage account invitees to sign up more quickly, and reduce the bounces on our sign-up page when we start asking for visitor’s information. Choosing the right email version should help us drive more users to our platform, especially with the release of our new Unlimited Viewers feature.
Leave the frills at home. We don’t need to act like we’re best friends with our new users, or trick them into some secret society with code names and avatars. People just need to be convinced that the invite they receive is coming from a person they trust, and the best way to do that is by being upfront about who that person is.
To see the data itself, check out the full Helio survey we ran!
