Thursday April 3- Personalization

Author

Ephraim Gopin
April 03, 2025

Hi !

Starting April 24 the enews will contain a new section: Strategy Insider. I will share with you how I build a strategy for an organization. Each week will be a continuation of the previous week’s content. Stay tuned!

🔝 🤫 Sunday? That’s Simchas Torah: What’s cookin this week

In this week’s enews…

  • What’s in a name?

  • Experience raising more

  • 4 questions you should be asking your donors

  • Great nonprofit posts you can learn from

  • The Good: A shoe sale

  • A hilarious morning routine parody

  • You’re not using shampoo correctly

The solution to last week’s Triple E (enews easter egg): This funny scene from the movie Airplane. (Although saying “funny” is redundant since every scene in that movie is funny!)

Let’s dive into this week’s pain point: Personalization and why you aren’t raising as much as you could.

⚛️ What are you doing? Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said “I drank what?”: A personal experience

On their birthdays, I call each of my kids on their birth minute. I don’t want to just say happy birthday. I want them to know I remember the exact second they came into this world and the joy it brought me… and the joy they have brought me every day since.

I bring each child the most personalized experience I can. As a parent, that’s what I should be doing.

(But when it comes to interacting with your donors, the parent model may not be the best tactic. See the article in today’s “A little of this and that” section)

Your organization should work hard to provide the most personalized experience for your audience and supporters. Giving them personalized interactions makes them feel like you understand them and you get what interests them as it relates to your mission, work and impact.

Personalization is a HUGE part of a high retention rate and high lifetime giving value. It’s critical to fundraising and marketing success. It’s a must for creating a two-way street and building relationships.

But here’s the thing: Personalization is MUCH more than just adding a person’s first name at the start of a direct mail letter or an email. I’m gonna share with you how to learn about your audience and deliver to them a personalized experience that will help you raise more.

(Side data point: Email subject lines that include the subscriber’s first name have a 50% higher open rate. I’m not saying stop addressing people by their first names! Continue doing that but you gotta go deeper.)

Proper personalization actually starts with how YOU make purchases online.

🥵 There’s the call. Three minutes: Learning from ecommerce

”Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

- Dale Carnegie

Being addressed by name helps keep our attention. Think about why good direct mail fundraising letters will be personalized and the person’s first name mentioned multiple times throughout.

But in April 2025 that’s nowhere near enough.

Think about your online purchases: The really good ecommerce companies know their customers well. They know what you like to buy, what you won’t purchase, what deals work and don’t work, what to offer and when.

There’s a reason you keep buying over and over from certain companies. It’s not just that the product is good. It’s the personalized attention and experience you get from the company.

Know who’s just like you? Your audience of supporters and donors.

They too want a personalized experience and far too few nonprofits provide that. Take a few minutes and read this great post about personalization and email. One quote stood out to me.

Courtney Grab, Senior Marketing Manager at Litmus, emphasizes the essence of true personalization: “There’s a misconception about what email personalization is. It’s not just about using someone’s name; it’s about asking users what they want and need and how they’d like to be engaged with, then delivering that. This level of personalization truly differentiates your emails from the masses.”

THAT is what your nonprofit needs to deliver constantly and consistently. What could a personalized experience look like?

As you can see, plenty of ways to personalize a person’s interaction with you so you boost engagement and build the relationship.

But going from survival to thrival isn’t just about the above. You’ve got go a little deeper and ask the four questions.

🔝 🔫 You! You are still dangerous. But you can be my wingman any time: The four questions you better be asking

When gratitude goes wrong

Sigh.

As someone who works with organizations on this and does trainings on gratitude, the above drove me nuts. Proper gratitude should be for EVERYONE, no matter their giving level!!!

And your gratitude should also be personalized.

(Warning: Major understatement alert) If you know me, you know that I am not a fan of Giving Tuesday (GT). But I AM a fan of Gratitude Tuesday.

Every year I do a roundup of the hundreds of GT emails that arrive in my inbox- the good, the bad and the ugly. I encourage you to have a look at what Second Helpings in Indianapolis does on that day. 😍 😍 😍 

If you really wanna connect with people, learn more about them, strengthen the relationship and provide them with a personalized experience, great gratitude is a good place to start.

My challenge to you is to go beyond that: You need to ask them the four questions.

Call people associated with your nonprofit and tell them you’re calling to thank them for their support of your organization. If they’re a donor, share with them a brief impact story or data point so they know how their recent gift was used.

Then ask them if they have a minute as you have a question for them. Here are four questions you should choose from to ask (or, if the convo is going great, ask all four):

ask your donors these questions

Ask the question, be quiet and take notes. Their answers to the above questions will provide you with a TON of information you can use to personalize their experience.

Added bonus: You’re gonna get some quotes from people you can use in your fundraising and marketing materials.

Another added bonus: You may learn things about your organization you didn’t even know (e.g. how people find out about you, how they view your work).

Here’s how you go from survival to thrival: Want people to read your materials? To take action? To donate and stay connected with your organization? Provide them the most personalized experience possible!

Retention will skyrocket. People will feel closer to your nonprofit. You’ll grow, be able to serve more people and have more impact.

Win win win!

🚪 Actually I don’t remember being born. It must have happened during one of my blackouts: Learn from the good

Next week Saturday night the Jewish holiday of Passover begins. There is a custom to dress in nicer clothes on a holiday than a regular day.

But what about people who can’t afford to buy new or even used nicer clothes than their regular attire?

The Flatbush Community Fund in New York knows about this pain point and they are dealing with it by having a shoe sale.

Last week they emailed me an invite to their pre-holiday shoe sale for boys and girls. They’re offering a wide range of shoes and the listed prices are well below what it would cost in a store.

The organization’s ED told me that shoes are the kind of item that’s much harder to get a decent hand me down. Therefore for two weeks before the holiday they have a location where they sell new kid’s shoes at a discounted price.

I asked what kind of response they get from the community. “Robust.”

It’s bad enough when parents can’t afford clothes for themselves. But for their kids, especially when they know their kids may feel bad as they see their friends wearing nice new clothes?

A shoe sale. Solves one of the holiday pain points.

Great idea from the Flatbush Community Fund!

🦇 ♾️ I see without seeing. To me, darkness is as clear as daylight. What am I?: A little of this and that

Here’s some great content for you to learn from:

  1. What donors want: Don’t be their parents!!! This week’s Ephraim’s Must Read! (MarketSmart)

  2. The best questions to ask major donors (Gail Perry Group)

  3. How to build a content marketing strategy that drives results (Storyly)

  4. Writing fundraising copy? Break all the rules (Philanthropy Daily)

  5. 24 free webinars to learn from in April (Wild Apricot)

🏝️ 🩺 What are you going to say? “Mayday, mayday, I’m being held by a pig lady”: The best parody!

There’s a good chance you watched the video of the absolutely insane morning routine some guy posted online. If you haven’t, watch it now. Banana peel? WTF?!

Anyway, when things like this make their way around, the Internet comes alive with the best snark, sarcasm and wit available.

Which is why I share the best parody of the above video. Watch and laugh!

🔝 🤫 Listen to me Hillary. I’m not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island, who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground: This week’s Make It Make Sense poem

Your mom cleaned the counters so off them you could lick
Which makes it strange why these astronauts are getting sick 

Sure plenty of kids make up stories in their heads
But you won’t believe what a babysitter found under a kid’s bed

We use it in our showers every day
But apparently we’re using shampoo the wrong way

It’s fun to read what’s under the lid sealed so tight
Although it appears that Snapple didn’t get all its facts right

I’ll be back next Thursday. Have a great weekend!

P.S. I listened to the Top Gun sound track while working on the enews. If you got all the clues above you’ll understand why.