Netflix’s ‘Play Something” feature is a roulette wheel selecting among algorithmically personalized shows the service thinks you might like.

Why did Netflix develop it?  Because their subscribers often experience a certain amount of anxiety and mental pain from choosing among the seemingly endless and growing choices.  This is a user experience problem that translates to a Netflix business problem.

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson One:  If you haven’t identified a user/supporter/donor problem then you could easily be making your fundraising worse, not better.  Ninety-nine percent of the problems we hear about – retention, 2nd gift conversion, acquisition yields – are not donor problems.

The Netflix team’s first step in thinking about their user problem was learning how the human brain processes choice. “We did a lot of research into the psychology behind theories like decision fatigue and tried to think about how to apply that in the context of Netflix,” says the product lead for Netflix.

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson Two:  There is rarely anything  new under the sun.  So, dig in on existing theory and research to learn what is already known about the problem you’re trying to solve.  At DonorVoice we always do a literature review when tackling a new problem or rethinking an old one – we always find something of value even if the topic is super niche or arcane.

Netflix didn’t just rely on global insights, they did extensive subscriber research.

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson Three:  Global insights from the broad, diverse world of behavioral science are invaluable,  but they’ll forever be unidirectional and top-down idea generation.   Bottom up, insights come from well conducted (most isn’t) research with your audience. 

Here is the Netflix key insight:  Subscribers see the virtue of choice but also its burden and these kind of live strangely in harmony. The virtue is users wanting  power and control but with that control comes frustration that soaks up precious watch time in browsing too long.

Do you have a donor insight that is that rich and specific and tied to the psychology of decision making?

Netflix designed a working prototype and launched a test.  It bombed.  Instead of punting, they did even more user research and more testing.  And the testing got more granular.

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson Four:  Adopt the Einstein maxim, if the facts don’t fit your theory, get new facts.  The Netflix theory and key insight were solid.  The prototype was a failure of execution, not the theory-led insight.

Netflix has since cracked the code in that their testing has gotten them to the point of platform-wide rollout, which is extremely hard to achieve in their ecosystem.  There is one big difference from their initial conception and roll out product, “it’s more opt-in instead of forcing everyone into that experience,” explains the Netflix product team.

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson Five:  Opt-in as default.  In what world is forcing someone to unclick a box a good idea as a default?  If your e-newsletter (or whatever) isn’t compelling enough to get Opt-in then it’s newsletter problem and no amount of opt-out as default will ever get you where you want to go. Opt-in is permission and opportunity.  Opt-out is manipulation and undermining autonomy and control.  It won’t end well.

Netflix sums up their new feature as “trying to leverage the subscriber’s own personal taste and make it as relevant as we can for them.”  The team is fine with some subscribers scoffing at it, because “Play Something” is not designed to be used by everyone.  The Netflix team goes on to say, “Different people want different experiences.”

Netflix-ing Your Fundraising, Lesson Six: One size fits all is awful business for Netflix and it’s awful business for fundraising. 

You should never have a single control.  The aim is a control for each donor segment.  Cracking the code on this is a process.  A quick, easy 3rd party data append or some gobbly-gook clustering solution with PowerPoint personas is appealing in its expediency,  but the path to failure is often paved with expediency over digging deeper into the why of behavior.

Kevin