Do You Use Personalized Matching In Your Fundraising?
Did either or both of these test ads beat the control? No peeking.
Neither test beat the control. Or at least that’s the case if you assume everyone is the same and do a random nth test, which is 99% of all tests.
How about this one, did either or both beat the control? Go ahead and peek if you like…
It was a bit of trick question since the ads only won when matched with the person they were designed for. This experiment developed “Test 1” to match up with more extroverted people. “Test 2” was tailored to match up better with introverted people.
If you mix introverted people with extroverted in your analysis, which all random nth test designs do, you get a false negative, both tests lost against the control.
If you assume people are motivated by different things and that the best way to get someone to do something is to match the message to their orientation and values then you find that the:
- Introverted test beat the control among introverts
- Extroverted test beat the control among extroverts
Personalized matching is the past, present and future. It requires changing the substance of the appeal to match the person.
- It doesn’t require being a large charity.
- It doesn’t require extra time or treasure since you are already spending a lot of time and resources on your current approach.
- And it sure as hell doesn’t require getting the basics right first. This is a basic or should be.
We don’t invent extra hours in our day to do this personalized matching, we bake it into the process. And having extra rules of the road for what images, copy points, style and tone to use is like paint by numbers – it makes us faster and with better outcomes. Win-win.
Kevin
Behavioral Science Q & A
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