2021 Messaging Research

A/B Message Testing for Social Media

During the time period being researched in 2021, Citizen Connect conducted an A/B testing pilot with different types of ad imagery that directed social media users to 2 events and 2 pieces of on-demand content on the Citizen Connect platform. From the topline summary, these are the notes from the final portion of the summary indicating the top insights.

Link to Topline Summary Report

Top Insights

From the report:

“2 of the ads so vastly out-performed the other 2 that I had to turn off those ads in order to generate any conversions for the other ads. Both of those ads that performed exceptionally wells ere for events, not on-demand pieces of content.”"

“It would be helpful to hear from the Unify Challenge and National Civic League if they actually had in increase in traffic to their website between the period of June 3rd and June 14th, That will help us know if these efforts to push events are actually fruitful.”

Analysis

After weeks of research into why there was such a significant amount of traffic to a particular event in the first two weeks of June, it was a relief to understand where this was coming from. Unfortunately, Google Analytics recorded this traffic as “direct”, which was disproportionately high in our Google Analytics research.

It was also clear from the body of the top-line summary that the Citizen Connect website does NOT allow for the Google Analytics tracking pixel to be embedded into the events or on demand content being tracked. This explains the disconnect we have been trying to explain.

A/B Testing as it Relates to New Research

This piece of data really ties together a piece of the story we wanted to be able to tell. The mystery of why there was a seemingly phantom rush of traffic to two event pages on Citizen Connect is explained by this non-trackable pilot campaign.

In addition, we have been able to glean insights into how there were so many visits to two event pages that yielded only one click-through to another Citizen Connect page out of ~7,100 hits on the event page.

A/B Testing as it Relates to Citizen Connect Objectives and Goals

Essentially, the result of the ad spend cannot be truly measured as the registration is hosted on our member pages. It is still helpful to know how much traffic was generated by the relevant ads; but one thing that is clear is that when traffic is driven to a given page, there is significant evidence that those clicks do not translate to the Citizen Connect goal of enticing citizens to explore the site and find events, content, and organizations that resonate with them.

For the first event, the National Civic League event, there were ~5,600 direct clicks on the event page and one click-through to another Citizen Connect page.

For the second event, the Unify Challenge, there were ~1,500 direct clicks on the event page and no click-throughs to Citizen Connect pages.