By Nancy Harhut (Chief Creative Officer)
What does organ donation have to do with direct marketing? More than you might think.
It all comes down to Choice Architecture – the phrase behavioral economists use to explain that the way choices are presented can influence the decisions people make about them.
For example, if you look at the organ donor rates in Europe, you’ll notice a marked difference. Some countries have participation rates hovering in the teens and twenties while others are near 100%. There’s virtually nothing in between.
As noted behavioral economist Dan Ariely points out, seeing that forces you to wonder what could be behind such a dichotomy. Is it religion? Perhaps culture? Two reasonable hypotheses.
However, when you look closer you’ll notice that some countries, take Austria and Germany, are very similar in these respects and yet have dramatically different organ donor rates – 12% for Germany and 99% for Austria.
It turns out that the single most influential factor is the way each country designs its motor vehicle forms.
In Germany, citizens need to check a box saying they do want to be organ donors. In Austria, citizens must check a box saying they do not.
In the world of Choice Architecture, it’s a matter of defaults.
And defaults are important. People often rely on them – either because they’re not sure of which course to take, or because they don’t wish to expend any additional effort.
Social scientists and behavioral economists have considerable research indicating that the human brain is hardwired to opt for easy. If we can take a shortcut, we often do – without really thinking about it.
For direct marketers, this is a crucial piece of information.
USING DECISION DEFAULTS IN DIRECT MARKETING
As direct marketers, our job is to get people to take action. And if it turns out that people often don’t think about the actions they take, and instead just behave reflexively, this can affect our campaigns.
But the thing to remember is, it can affect them in a good way or a bad way – and that’s largely up to us and the defaults we design.
For example, let me tell you about two charity donations I recently made, and the Choice Architecture involved with each.
The first went to Back on My Feet, the organization my colleague Megan ran the Boston Marathon for. When I went online to make my $100 donation, they just factored in the $4.50 credit card processing fee, making my total contribution $104.50.
There was a small orange edit link next to the fee, which I could’ve clicked to remove it – effectively making my pledge lower and my total commitment $100. But the default was to just pay it, and that’s exactly what I did.
Shortly after, I pledged a friend riding in the Pan Mass Challenge. However in this case, I was offered the opportunity to click a small box saying I wanted them to add in the credit card processing fee. The default was to just go with my pledged amount, and so I did.
The first instance offered me the chance to opt out. The second to opt in. Yet in both cases, I opted to do nothing. And if social scientists are to be believed, I’m not that different from most people in this respect.
In fact, I worked on a campaign that allowed me to see the in-market results of this firsthand.
My client sold life and disability insurance via the workplace. Typically, the human resources department of a company would send out an email saying the insurer would be in on a certain day, and inviting employees to sign up for a meeting with the insurance representative. At that meeting they could learn about the various insurance plans and decide to purchase one if they wished.
Recently, my client tested changing the defaults.
Instead of asking employees to opt in to a meeting, we made going to the meeting the default. Each employee received an email from their HR department telling them when and where they were scheduled to meet with the insurance representative.
The default was to show up. If they didn’t wish to attend, the employee would have to take action to get out of going to the meeting.
How did it work? Attendance skyrocketed. And not surprisingly, insurance sales shot up too.
REMEMBER TO MAKE THINGS EASY FOR YOUR TARGET
The lesson here is to make it easy for people to do what we want them to do. Whether you design programs or pages, think about how you present your choices. Know what your target’s default action will likely be.
Remember, people typically won’t put a lot of thought or effort into the decisions you ask them to make. They’ll just take the easy way out and go with the default.
That’s not something that’s easy for us to hear. As direct marketers, we work hard to deliver a powerful message. To offer all the right reasons. To invoke emotion. And ultimately, to persuade.
Everyday we sell our hearts out.
Just remember, that job becomes a lot easier when we acknowledge the role that Choice Architecture plays in human decision-making.
I’ll be speaking about that and more at this year’s DMA &THEN event in Los Angeles.
If you attend, consider catching my session “7 Human Behavior Hacks that Increase Engagement and Response” on Monday, Oct. 18 at 2:30.
It’s one of five the DMA’s brought “back by popular demand.”
A version of this article first appeared in the September issue of DMAW Marketing AdVents.
The post Selling Our Hearts Out: Organ Donation, Direct Marketing & Decision Defaults appeared first on Wilde Agency.
