my butt

Fitting after the holiday diet of whipping cream, chocolate and butter?
Let me explain...
I just received my very own personalized calendar.Frankly, one of the best pieces of personalization I have yet to see. Each calendar page featured me -- well, my name in one form or another. The one I like best is a 20-some year old firm cheek with my name tattooed on it.
But (no pun intended)...
The personalization was driven by mechanics.
First of all, the personalized letter told me "It was a pleasure meeting you..." at an event I never attended. Seeing as I have no recollection of this company (although that just may be an oversight), I certainly never met Felix.
Secondly, they spoke to me as if I was a company -- not an agency. Which immediately tells me they don't actually know who I am.
Thirdly, the creative was driven by male minds... hockey sweaters, Harleys, fast cars and, yes, butt cheeks.
Finally, while the calendar included is clever and the personalizing interesting -- all they did was insert my first or last name on every page. Because they don't know if I am male or female, they tried to make the calendar a little generic, although the bias is certainly for the female mind... few 50 some females are actually interested in their name being tattooed on a twenty year old model's butt.
Here's what I think.
Slapping random "personal" names on paper, on the telephone or in other marketing efforts is pretty easy. We can get lists from many different sources. But actually understanding our donors or customers is a whole different game. Tracking their activity with us and using that activity for increased sales or donations... that is true personalization.
Amazon probably is one of the leaders in personalization. They also have access to a lot of information about us -- what we read, what kind of gifts we buy, where our relatives live, what kind of gifts and books we dream of but resist buying. They can tempt us with further sales by sending us a text or email that gives us what we want -- sales on the items that we have already looked at. A to-be father I know tested the theory on purchasing baby items. Over a two week period he went to Amazon and looked at the stuff he wanted to but for his baby. He went back every two or three days to check out the stuff. Within 2 weeks the prices had dropped on all the items by 15 - 20%.
Amazon knew what he was looking for and pushed him over the edge by giving him sale prices.
So how do we apply that to fundraising (or any sales activity)?
Your data base is the key.
First of all, you need to know how you want to use personalization. Then you need to equip your data base to collect the information you need making it easily accessible for communication pieces.
This is more difficult than you might think. Few of us are integrated. How much does your direct mail data base know about your donor's activities on the web site or their giving pattern through telephone and web? How much of your CRM activities do you capture in a usable form so that you can write them smart letters?
Just ensuring that their addresses are current is a significant challenge for many of us.
I slap my own hand when a promotion we sent out recently was delivered to my personal address -- except that I hadn't lived there for a year. How simple is it to keep addresses up to date? (That was rhetorical).
Secondly, plan.
If you have not anticipated wise use of personalization the execution will be a nightmare. I can't tell you how many times I have been told that "we have the data, we will just have to dig for it." Translated: "Yeah, the information is buried in the data, but no one knows how to get it. You can try, but it's not going to be pretty."
I still think it's worth trying.
We worked with a client this fall on a highly personalized piece. The information was buried and we had some trouble accessing it. All went well -- except for about 200 records that were misaligned because of the amount of play that had to be done with the lists and data. In the end it worked out really well -- we phoned all the people who received a mis-mailing and the overall results of the campaign where a quadrupled revenue directly attributed to that mailing. Definitely worth the trouble -- and next year it will go much better.
Finally, train administrative staff to think creatively.
Too often the people administrating the data have not been fully integrated into the vision of the organization and the role data plays in overall growth. That's short sighted of the marketing team. The data engineers are your friends -- nurture that friendship. When they catch the full vision of your goals, you'll have to reign them in!
So the personalized calendar with the butt cheek?
It's going to Gareth (my husband)....