Persona non grata
There’s an interesting piece at CMO.com called “Don’t Take It Personally, But Innovators Are Done With Personas.” In essence, leading for-profit CMOs are saying the same thing: giving a set of demographic and weak psychographic viewpoints a name and endeavoring toward it doesn’t work:
- “Traditional personas tell you very little because they are based on simplistic models and transactions. They cannot help understand why customers bought, what motivated them to buy, etc.” – Shinola CMO Bridget Russo
- “The reason personas failed to achieve true personalization is that they were too simplistic to reflect the unique attributes that differentiate individual customers and prospects from the mass of other similar customers and prospects. And that is the essence of true personalization.” – TIAA CMO Connie Weaver
- “We recently analyzed the personas we had been using and found that the customer had changed dramatically. We are now rethinking the real-world, human differences, versus just transactional differences, among our individual customers and formulating a plan to engage with them as individual gamers versus superficial aggregates of different gamer personas.” – Darin Smith GameStop senior director
They conclude that traditional personas from implicit data don’t increase response rates; you need explicit data that people tell you about themselves.
I haven’t used formal personas in the past, but I’ve used proxies: things like trying to figure out what the difference is among “Red, White, and Blues,” “Heartlanders,” and “Blue Highways” (three real segments from PRIZM social groups), looking at the love child of transactional data and cooperative data that is Target Analytics Loyalty Insights), or my own anthropomorphization of a demographic profile (I often thought of “writing for Ethel,” a nice 67-year-old grandmother when writing copy).
These are helpful in helping remember “I am not the donor; the donor will not necessarily like what I like.” But beyond that, you are looking for some level of predictive value and these simply don’t deliver.
Moreover, a heavy-handed persona or segment can make a donor feel like they are little more than the box that you’ve put them in. One person in the CMO piece said:
“When I receive generic emails, it is obvious that you do not care enough to understand my individual needs. Instead, you are trying distill my complex needs into simple generalities to make your email blast easier for you … and useless to me!”
Ouch.
But we need to segment. We need something to differentiate among different groups of people. So if it isn’t demographics, personas, or RFM, what is it?
The for-profits also have a guide for this – understanding why, at a basic level, people give. In the article Dennis Kopitz, Shinola’s director of ecommerce said:
“To achieve and scale true personalization, we need to obtain deep human insights regarding who buys which category of our products, why they buy, what their needs and expectations are, and what they want next from us. This will take us to a far deeper level of understanding than traditional personas.”
We know that for disease charities, for example, people who give because they personally have the disease are far more like each other in their giving behavior than:
- A 70-year-old woman is like another a 70-year-old woman
- A 4-6 month, $20-$24.99 multigiver is like another a 4-6 month, $20-$24.99 multigiver
- A Tipper is like another Tipper
- Or a mail donor is like another mail donor
In other words, demographics, RFM, model, and channel preference all pale compared to a deeper understanding of donor identity in terms of predictive power and customization opportunities.
And every nonprofit has these key differentiates. It could be cat v dog people (or, like one DonorVoice partner, birders versus general nature people). It could be people who give to you because of your advocacy versus your services. Or another partner who found that there was a segment of people giving to live vicariously through the exploits and adventures of their volunteers versus another who was giving so that someone else would take care of the field work.
We’d love to help find this differentiator with you, but it’s more important that you find it, because finding out why different people give to you, beyond a one-size-fits-all answer is the key to not just messaging but audience.
9 responses to “Persona non grata”
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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We’ve implemented personas here at Make-A-Wish (case study here: http://blog.see3.com/how-make-a-wish-is-telling-new-stories-with-audience-personas/) as part of a larger refresh of our digital content strategy, and have observed a significant shift in the diversity of our storytelling as a result. The key was getting people to understand that these are dynamic, not static characters. They are also very values driven; meaning, they were designed to help our marketers better understand that it’s our shared values that create and amplify emotional connections between consumers and our brand.
I agree with this POV from Gartner: Personas are not the problem, bad personas are the problem: http://blogs.gartner.com/chris-ross/2017/02/03/the-problem-with-personas/
Thanks Jono! This is an interesting case study. What have you found the end results to be? That is, how has the greater diversity in the types of stories you are telling impacted your goals
Looking at the personas you have on see3, I see how the tips you have for connecting with potential volunteers, donors, and wish referrers would be helpful in messaging. However, I’m not understanding why it is helpful to have that in persona form. For example, Eddie and Vanessa are both potential volunteers. When messaging to both of them, you should tell both of them that volunteers are heroes who can have a profound impact on the lives of children.
Why is it helpful that one of them is a 25-year-old professional female and the other is a 57-year-old successful career man, especially when it seems as likely that this person could be a 41-year-old part-time subtitute teacher or an 80-year-old grandmother?
My argument above is that understanding why people do what they do for nonprofit — identity and preference — is the primary factor in communicating to them, rather than a series of demographic factors. Have you looked at messaging strategies in this way? For example, do people who have had someone they love (child, grandchild, sibling, etc.) receive a wish respond to different messaging than those who don’t? My gut would be that those might be factors that cut across these personas — Vanessa and Margaret may respond to the same type of messaging if they are in a similar identity group, even though their personas are very similar.
It’s something that we’d love to explore with you if you are interested.
Sorry; should be “Vanessa and Margaret may respond to the same type of messaging if they are in a similar identity group, even though their personas are very dissimilar.” (not similar)
Nick
I think your piece and the article brings up good points. And I think that as technology improves, it is increasingly possible to create real personalization in how you respond to individuals. In the nonprofit context, I think we are (mostly) a long way for having the toolsets and technology to act the way large brands can. (The core set of CRM tools used in nonprofits doesn’t come close to what we see in larger consumer brands and etailers.)
In terms of Make-A-Wish, we found that the motivations of the older male volunteer and the young professional volunteer, for example, were totally different. The young professional is looking for a resume builder, looking for a social network and connections in their city. The older male volunteer wants to feel highly valued in their skills and put a whole career of learning to use. Make-A-Wish is unique in that volunteers do the core wish-giving work and so there are opportunities for the highly skilled. They both share the benefit of what it means to serve the children and their families, but they come from really different places and aren’t recruited the same way.
We don’t think of personas as a fine point instrument in the way that the personalization of an Amazon.com can be. But in an organization with 62 independent domestic chapters, trying to move the needle on their storytelling is a tough task. The reason this move is critical is that the traditional wish story reached it’s audience already and it was the only story they were telling. Telling these diverse stories is bringing new people on board and adding new vibrancy and urgency to their messaging. Having these personas on the wall of every chapter has instilled that basic questioning of who am I talking to? what channel is right for them? do I understand their values? It has sharpened the messaging significantly and we’re seeing results.
Oh man — I’ve done messaging for a chapter-based organization before and getting everyone to think about their audience and have conscious and consistent storytelling is a massive undertaking. Even explaining the value of telling the organization’s story in the public is a challenge for some, especially those who came to the mission with the purest of hearts thinking “of course I want to do this. Who wouldn’t want to do this? We’ll have to be turning people away!”… Alas, would it were so. So honestly, I’ll applaud any tool that helps focus a distributed organization on the view and the voice of their target audience.
And I agree that we wouldn’t want to be a personalization engine like an Amazon — and technologically can’t be in many ways. However, I view this as an opportunity. Amazon lives largely in the world of implied preferences: if you look for a hard drive, ads for the 2TB and the 5TB will stalk you even after you bought the 3TB.
Nonprofits, on the other hand, can live in the world of explicit preference. We can ask people what interests them and why they give and what they thought of their donation experience. And we can customize based on that in a way that Amazon can’t.
My wife and I are an example of this. When we go out to eat, she likes steak. I like fish. Over half of the time the waitperson will switch our orders. His/her persona is of a male steak eater and a female fish eater. Even though we’ve expressed our preferences, they usually are not honored.
So in my mind, personas get it backwards. They look at a cluster, name it by its most common constituents and lead with the name. This is certainly better than nothing. Statistically, you’ll be right more often than not when you give the guy the steak. But if it’s a 35-year-old tech millionaire who wants to share his/her skills or the recently unemployed 60-year-old who wants to meet people who could use their skills in a new job, the persona doesn’t match.
What I would argue for us turning these upside-down. Instead of thinking about Vanessa, the person who wants to volunteer to help and to network, I would argue it’s better to talk about people who volunteer to network. That’s an important part of the experience for them, so we work to optimize that experience for them. If Vanessa happens to fit that preference, great. If not, also great.
I think you are missing the point that Vanessa is a fictional character. By thinking about “Vanessa,” people are reminded about the importance of telling stories about people who volunteer to network.
Absolutely. And insofar as they remind people to tell those stories generally, I can see how they would be very valuable.
What I’m saying is that in a direct marketing context, personas have both false positives and false negatives. That is, if you see a 25-year-old female professional and assume she wants to volunteer because of networking or see a 60-year-old empty nester and assume that he is not, you can be wrong in both assumptions.
When you look at things by identity and specifically self-identification, you don’t have those issues.
Agreed. It was important up front to make clear to everyone in the org that these were brand marketing personas, not direct marketing personas–and that their primary function was to shift our storytelling from the hero to the mentor character archetype. As to your question about results, most of our leading KPIs are trending in the right direction. That being said, I have yet to see a strong ROI framework for measuring the impact of brand storytelling.
Well, the ROI on storytelling is by no means instant (and no less important for that fact), so key metrics heading in the right direction is great news. It’s so critical to get people telling effective stories and personas seem like something that are getting people focused and excited. An interesting use for personas I hadn’t thought of.
I was thinking of them more in a direct marketing context and how, there, they can stunt a better understanding of donor identity and preference. So I’ll clarify that in the next blog post and I really appreciate you bringing this to my attention. Thanks!