Beyond “Dear [First Name]”: Customization at the Audience Level 

You’re probably already familiar with the basics of personalization. 

“Dear [First Name]” is a great place to start an email or letter, and you might even mention the donor’s city or giving history. It’s personalization 101. But as useful as that is, it’s only the baseline of what’s necessary for today’s campaigns to succeed. 

The next step is customization at the audience level. This means making strategic decisions not just about how you address someone, but about who you’re speaking to in the first place and what they need to hear. When you combine timing, targeting, and messaging alignment, you get better engagement and more efficient campaigns.  

Rather than assuming every donor will respond the same way to a message, organizations can now build strategies around meaningful segmentation. One example is offer assignment modeling. Instead of sending the same mail package to every donor, fundraisers can use data to predict which donors are likely to respond to different types of offers. Your donors feel seen, and you avoid over-sending or overspending in the process. 

Our SimioCloud Offer Assignment Modeling takes this even further. By analyzing over 2 billion donation transactions from more than 122 million unique donors, the model can identify which donors should receive a premium package, who will respond just as well to a standard one, and who might not be ready for either. This helps organizations reduce waste, lower campaign costs, and deliver more personalized, effective outreach. 

Audience-level customization is necessary for long-term journeys. This can be as simple as who gets a higher-touch direct mail package or whether to include a planned giving insert. But it can also get more involved. Moore has donor ambassadors who can call on mid- or high-level prospects to thank, support, and learn from them. An international relief organization was working to increase the value of their mid-level donors. Working with Moore Donor Ambassadors who contacted them through bespoke emails, phone calls, and/or handwritten notes, their average yearly donations increased by 10%, and their retention increased by 20%. 

Segmented messaging is another key piece. A story or spokesperson that resonates with one group may not land with another. Our 2024 in Review: Charitable Giving by the Numbers shares an example of this. A national disease organization preparing a campaign had three potential spokespeople to feature: their control creative, a traditional test story, and a new story favored by some leadership. Instead of guessing, they tested all three with our Neuro-Fundraising® Lab, evaluating which story motivated giving as well as what donors found most relatable, memorable, and inspiring. 

The findings were clear. The leadership favorite wasn’t favored by donors at all; if they had selected it on internal preference alone, it could have negatively impacted results. Testing helped them avoid a misstep and revealed a smarter path forward. The control creative performed better with older, non-Hispanic audiences, while the test story resonated with younger, African American, and Hispanic donors. The organization was able to tailor their messaging across channels based on what actually worked, not just what felt right internally. 

That’s the power of audience-level customization. It moves strategy beyond one-size-fits-all messaging and gives fundraisers practical ways to make better decisions, backed by data.