Your database knows someone gave $43 at 9:17 p.m. after clicking an email on an iPhone. It may also know the campaign, payment method, landing page and which subject line got the click.

That is a great deal of information about the transaction and very little about the person. We tend to collect what is easy and available, rather than what might actually help explain behavior. Personality is one of the more obvious omissions.

Consider dogs.

Researchers assessed 389 owners and 518 dogs on the Big Five personality traits. Owners and their dogs resembled each other across all five. More extraverted owners tended to have more extraverted dogs. More neurotic owners tended to have more neurotic dogs, with similar patterns for openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness.

The result held up when independent observers rated the dogs and it disappeared when owners were randomly paired with other dogs. Length of ownership did not strengthen the similarity, either, so this was not simply people spending years turning their pets into furry versions of themselves.

In separate dog and owner personality research there is a match between breed and owner personality.  Toy breeds are more likely to be owned by people high in Openness.   Lab owners?  They’re high in Agreeableness, just like the stereotype for the breed.

What about hunting  breeds?  Yep, people higher in Conscientiousness who are more ideologically conservative and more likely to live in non-urban settings.

Imagine something so powerful it determines, in part, whether we marry, who we marry, whether we have kids, our profession, our interest in nature and art, musical taste, job performance, mental health, volunteer behavior, grade point average, dog or cat owner and yes, type of dog?

What are the chances Personality doesn’t play a role in the decision to support your charity?  How hard is it to believe that there are donors on your file who respond better to novelty, possibility and imagination while others prefer structure, proof and a clear plan.

Now imagine you can know exactly which donors fall into which group and have a crib sheet on words to use, images to use and examples of a Meta ad and letter for each trait?

And you can get this human insight and personalization for $0.15 per name.  This data is your asset and it never expires so the cost is one-time, the value is permanent.

So, what’s the barrier to trial in achieving meaningful personalization?  We’d love to know.

Kevin