When is Less More?
Facebook is nothing if not obsessed with users using the app more frequently and for longer durations. App notifications are like crack for this hamster wheel and so the idea of sending fewer seems anathema.
But this is exactly what their data science team did because user satisfaction surveys showed a preference for fewer notifications.
The result? It was a usage train wreck. Sending fewer notifications resulted in a significant decline in app usage. In most testing paradigms this would result in two knee-jerk reactions,
- People don’t know what they want or say what they do – hence surveys are mostly noisy and misleading
- The only thing that matters is in-market testing – hence case closed, fire up the notification machine
But the Facebook team had more confidence in their survey data, their users and the extended thinking on why sending fewer notifications might still work despite the early results.
Their test was baked in from the beginning to be a year-long experiment. They hypothesized that fewer, but more relevant, notifications might enhance user satisfaction without compromising app usage.
- They used customer satisfaction data to only send the notifications that users rated as a 5 (on five pt scale) in import, instead of the usual 4 or 5 scores.
- They theorized that it may take a while for users to notice and appreciate fewer notifications.
- This would in turn breed higher user satisfaction overall and higher retention.
But the initial results were scary to look at and absent a well-thought-out, longer-term test with rationale it’s easy to imagine lots of pressure to abandon ship.
Look at retention (as measured by usage) in the sea of red in the early days, yikes. This is akin to sending fewer solicitations but only running the test for one month. You’ll never learn anything, but you will reinforce the false, too simplistic by half belief that ask more = make more.
The green rising tide tells the rest of the story at Facebook. Their key finding, “After a year we saw that in the fewer notifications experience, users were using Facebook more — it just took a long time for user behavior to shift and less disruption led to high organic usage, which increased both user satisfaction and app usage.”
Lessons for fundraisers?
- People don’t give because we ask. But if you believe that “ask more = make more” then you may disregard the first statement.
- People only become “good” donors (i.e. repeat givers) if they are psychologically satisfied, which is measured by measuring their sense of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness
- Key driver analysis of these satisfaction measures combined with actual giving data will tell you what causes donors to be psychologically satisified
- Nowhere in this list of key drivers will you find “send more solicitations”
- If you overall communication and interaction with donors makes them feel satisfied, they’ll keep giving but mostly on their own terms. How one asks and what one asks for does tactically influence how much and how often people give.
- Any material change in donor/user experience may take a bit of time to get noticed and adjusted to
- Long-term effects may be different from short-term effects, or even the opposite
Kevin
5 responses to “When is Less More?”
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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Clearly, we know testing will tell us if this is relevant for our communities. However, is it even relevant to compare a social media platform that is often used hourly to an email program that reaches out monthly (weekly at best,) or a direct mail program that might reach out 4 to 6 times a year to gauge less being more?
Hi Tom, thanks for reading and commenting and questioning. It’s certainly true that multiple times daily is a different frequency animal than once per week but consider, even in this Facebook data there is huge variance in the number of notifications received per person as it’s directly related to the size of your personal social network, your activity etc.
And the FB researchers didn’t find that less is more but only for the highest frequency notification people.
More importantly, I want to disavow anyone thinking that frequency or the act of asking is the lever of success. People do not give because we ask. Creating a “journey” whose principle decisioning “tool” is how many times is like building a house based entirely on the number of windows.
There are lots of donors on your file – at least the mode if not plurality – who only give once per year. They won’t modify this behavior no matter how often you ask. Check that, they may quit giving entirely if it becomes too annoying.
If you could get the average gift per donor on your file to be 2x you’d be a rockstar as would your charity. Does anyone think the path to get there is increase the number of asks in an increasing number of channels? What about a dedicated effort to ask people to auto-renew for their 1x gift per year for all those who have already demonstrated this is their preference? In exchange, you stop all the other soliciting.
Some cohort will certainly consider going from 1x to 2x per year on auto-renew, especially newer folks who haven’t established a behavioral pattern with you yet.
More important than all this, there is science around ‘cadence’ (pulsing, not always one) and ‘channel’ (modality really, 3 to 4 modes per “on” period if pulsing) that must be factored in to journey development and lastly, puttting everyone into one size fits all messaging rather than messaging to their motivation is like building that same house, determined by windows, to everyone.
Good points, and thanks for the clarity. Truly one size never fits all and plenty of our patrons have let us know they prefer one appeal per year, which we honor. I’m also thinking back to your post on the Awareness Problem, and agree that we need to be in front of our prospects simply to remind them of the need and how they can help. So I feel a bit more versus a bit less ensures we are in front of the vast majority of our prospects when they are ready to give – share of wallet follows share of mind, right?
hi Tom, yes share of wallet does follow share of mind and agree that most of the value of every single appeal or communication or ad is about brand building, which is mostly a function of creating distinct mental associations. The challenge for most charities, big and small, is that they are only marketing, advertising and fundraising to a very tiny subset of the “in-market” audience because of list swap, co-op modeling, uploading of names to create look-alikes and all the other machinations that have us taking in each other’s dirty laundry.
This may be a valuable study for the larger nonprofits that have a communications department and a fundraising team and are already sending out lots and lots of messages. Yet there are thousands of small-to-medium-size nonprofits that have neither, and they send out “asks” once or twice a year. For them, more is more, as long as they are sending out letters, emails, etc., that donors and prospects actually want to read!