Commitment Redux
People in highly committed relationships judge alternatives as less attractive compared with single people. This devaluing of alternatives carries over to brands too. Consumers who strongly prefer a brand evaluate the competing brand more negatively. Higher commitment causes people to focus on how the brand is dissimilar from their preferred brand, low-commitment consumers focus on similarities.
I first wrote about Commitment on these pages in 2011. Here’s an excerpt:
Committed donors have a higher average gift and lifetime value than the Un-Committed donor. We know how to measure the Commitment level and how to identify the activities your organization already engages in that actually impact it.
Since then we’ve conducted nearly a hundred Commitment studies across 8 different countries and four continents and collected Commitment scores from hundreds of thousands of donors. If you’re considering donor research, make it a Commitment study since it’s the only methodology that combines survey data with giving data and the only reliable way to find out which of your donor experiences matter and which ones don’t.
If you measure Commitment and know how to increase it you’ll get lots of downstream, compounding effects. Your Committed donors will give much less attention to otherwise attractive competitor brands. Ironically they’ll give more attention to the less attractive alternative but only to reinforce their existing preference. Low Commitment donors are going to be much more fickle and do more brand switching.
It is an attention economy. What causes attention is what matters and one of those factors is their Commitment or lack thereof.
Kevin
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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