Secret Giver – Easter Reflections

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With Easter almost upon us, the end of the first 12 months of Secret Giver also beckons. The colossus of comms received – both paper and electronic – gave rise the topical discussion (in our office anyway) of quantity versus quality.

It’s obvious, I hear you cry, surely it’s the quality that matters; less is more, don’t overload donors, blah blah blah.

Well, not exactly.

Many charities worry about bombarding donors with too much information too often, but at JGA, we have discovered that this isn’t always the case. Certainly, there are some charities who really should remain nameless (and probably should know better), who overload their supporters with too many messages of generic and formulaic content. Yawn – time to switch off and stop seeing what’s in front of you.

But perception can be skewed. At Secret Giver HQ, we found that even when frequency was relatively high, if the content of any communication was of good quality, and relevant to the supporter’s interests, then it was perceived as being far less intrusive, irrespective of regularity.

Let me shed a little light with an example: our Secret Giver fed back assuredly that Charity X had communicated far less often than Charity Y. When we checked the stats, the opposite was found to be true. They had just enjoyed the content and style of Charity X far more, so had perceived the communications to be far less frequent. This was a pattern that we saw repeated across many charities that we benchmark.

The moral of the story? Think about your content, and think about your donor and their preferences – not your own.