Hyper-Personalization: More Than Just %First_Name%

People engage more when experiences are personalized because personalization helps overcome two of the biggest constraints we all live with: limited attention and the need for relevance. Simply inserting someone’s first name in an email or addressing them by “Dear [First Name]” is only scratching the surface. The kind of personalization that drives real engagement and larger, more sustained support in fundraising is about tailoring the whole constituent experience based on what people care about: who they are, how they give, how and when they interact, what motivates them, and when they're most open to being asked.

Let’s draw on a recent example from education to illustrate the power of hyper-personalization: Google’s Learn Your Way, and then flesh out five elements of personalizing the constituent experience in fundraising.

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What We Can Learn from Learn Your Way

Google’s new research experiment Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI shows how much stronger outcomes can be when content is adapted to learners rather than delivered in a “one-size-fits-all” way.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• The experiment allows students to select their grade level and personal interests (e.g. sports, music, food) so that examples and contexts in lessons are more relevant.
• It offers multiple formats of content (mind maps, audio lessons, immersive text, quizzes, etc.), so learners can engage in the mode(s) that work best for them.
• In a controlled study, students using Learn Your Way scored 11 percentage points higher on a long-term recall test than those using a standard digital reader.
• Also, students reported higher engagement and preference: many said they preferred using the tool, found it more empowering and relevant.

So, personalizing not just superficial features, but the core content and the way it’s delivered, makes a measurable difference.

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5 Elements of Hyper-Personalization in Fundraising/Advancement

Here are five domains where we can bring the same kind of intelligent personalization into fundraising, and how doing each well can boost effectiveness:

Demographic Information 🌎

What it means: Age, location (city, region), life stage (e.g. early career, mid-career, retired), household income, education, etc. The basics of “who this person is.”‍

Why it matters: Demographics set expectations and norms. Age and career stage often correlate with priorities, and different demographic groups have different communication habits and channel preferences.

Giving History 🎁

What it means: Previous gifts (size, frequency), preferred programs or causes within your organization, timing of past donations, whether they are recurring donors etc. 

Why it matters: Research and advancement practice consistently show that past giving is the single most reliable indicator of what action someone may take next.

Channel & Contact Method 📱

What it means: Whether someone prefers email, phone, mail, text, or in-person. Also tone/style: stories vs. data, short vs. long forms, video vs. detailed reports.

Why it matters: If you deliver via the wrong channel or method, you’ll lose attention. Communicating through channels that constituents prefer or are likely to engage with both improves response rates, and prevents donor fatigue/frustration.

Behavior/Engagement Signals 👋

What it means: How people have interacted: which content they’ve clicked, articles read, events attended, volunteer involvement, responses to past appeals, etc. These are often dynamic, real-time indicators of interest.

Why it matters: Allows tailoring both content and timing. For example, does someone repeatedly click on environmental impact stories? Do they only attend certain events? Behavior is often the strongest signal of what matters right now.

Timing/Life Stage & Context ⏰

What it means: When is the right moment? That includes both calendar timing (end-of-year? Day of giving?, matching periods?) and personal timing (retirement, new job,, marriage?), plus recent engagement of a donor. 

Why it matters: Even the best message delivered at the wrong time often underperforms. Timing matters for receptivity and can make the difference between a “yes” or “no.”

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Putting It Together: What Hyper-Personalization Looks Like in Practice

1. Adaptive Content/Messaging

Just as Learn Your Way adapts textbook examples to students’ interests, you can adapt appeals or reports to constituents’ interests. For instance, if a donor has previously supported arts programming, future communications could lead with arts impact, using stories from that area rather than generic institutional news. Or if a donor is a basketball season ticket holder, they could receive a personalized video about the impact that a scholarship has had for their favourite players.

2. Omnichannel Engagement

In Learn Your Way, students could choose their way to learn: mind maps, audio lessons, quizzes etc, all coming together for a consistent learning experience. In fundraising, allow constituents to choose preferred communication channels: video, phone, written reports via email or direct mail and use an omnichannel approach to deliver a unified constituent experience.

3. Testing and Feedback Loops

Google did a controlled trial to measure recall. In fundraising, test different appeals (message types, ask amounts, channels, timing) with different segments. Measure what works (open rates, gift rates, retention) and feed that data back to refine segmentation and personalization.

4. Machine Learning and Predictions

‍ML can help identify who is likely to make a major gift, who is likely to lapse, or who is ready for a mid-level ask. This helps in resource allocation: focus effort where ROI is higher.

5. Privacy and Trust

‍As you gather more data and act on it, you must maintain constituent trust. Be open about what data you collect, how you use it, allow preferences/opt-outs. Just as personalized learning tools guard against “one approach fits all” but also avoid being invasive, personalization should also respect privacy and choice.

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Evidence That Personalization Actually Moves the Needle

• The Learn Your Way study showed an 11-point percentage improvement in long-term recall versus standard digital materials. That’s a large effect, showing that personalization + modality adaptation isn’t just nice-to-have, but measurably better.
• In fundraising, Fundmetric's publication Machine Learning The Donor Journey shows that using time-series and behavioral data, Recurrent Neural Networks can learn accurate models of how much a constituent will donate, and we use these models to suggest actions for charities to take on an individual basis.
• Fundraising organizations using rigorous segmentation consistently outperform generic appeals: higher open rates, better donor retention, more upgrades.

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When done well, hyper-personalization is much more than name tags and salutations. It’s about putting the constituent at the center of the universe, understanding who they are, what they care about, and how and when they prefer to engage. 

For organizations aiming to future-proof their fundraising, increase organizational relevance, and be sustainable, the question isn’t if to personalize; it’s how deeply and intelligently you can do it.