Happy New Year and When to Trust Data 

by Nick Ellinger, Chief Brand Officer

I just received my calendar for 5784 from my local Chabad group for Rosh Hashanah. I receive my local Jewish newsletter weekly. And I frequently get invites to Torah study and local synagogues.  

Here’s the issue: I’m not Jewish. 

Nothing against Judaism or its practitioners; it’s just not our family. Each of these marketing efforts is wasted on me. 

My guess is that this stems from a 2016 Amazon purchase of a menorah to teach our kids about different traditions. 

This highlights an important direct marketing topic: what data to use for what? I just wrote a book highlighting A to Z – 26 different ways of segmenting and customizing to different donor audiences. Most of these would rely on third-party data (at least initially) to determine factors like ethnicity, gender, age, etc. 

These data should be used for modeling, not for specific customization. Many-factor segmentation is transparent to the recipient. If my purchase of a menorah is one of 87 factors in why I got a mail piece, that’s not something I’m likely to notice. Even if you customized the ask string to be in multiples of 18, most non-Jewish people would not notice that this is customized for a Jewish person (as the Jewish word for life—chai—has letters that add up to 18 in Jewish numerology (gematria). 

However, if I get a calendar for the year 5784 or a mail piece with the phrase “as a fellow Jew,” it’s clear there’s been a data mix-up somewhere along the line. 

Thus, separate what you know (first-party data) and what you think you know (second- and third-party data). If your customization is obvious, you must be confident in this prediction. 

To build this confidence, it’s always better to ask. Through your routine interactions with donors and potential donors, continuing to learn more about them always makes sense. This often means replacing “there’s a 57% chance this person is a female doctor” (imputed or implied data) with “we have asked; she says she is a doctor and prefers to be addressed as she.” (explicit data)  

All this helps build relevance for the donor, which is a win for them and you. Any extra data you glean about your donors is a competitive advantage over other organizations who won’t be able to do that customization (or who might do it incorrectly). 

In short: Happy belated New Year to all my Jewish friends and happy Thursday to everyone else. Without proper data, I’ll let you pick into which group you belong.