Direct Response

I saw this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention display in an airport the other day. It's not a fundraising message, but it makes a communication error that's often made in fundraising. Here's the error: The CDC is talking about the issue from its own point of view, not that of its audience. If you work at…

Every year, my favorite charity saves 1,835 cats in Vancouver, British Columbia. But it doesn’t talk to me about that. It tells me about one cat at a time. Why? Because it understands what makes a great thank-you letter. The thank-you letter is an often-neglected piece of donor communication. It sits, stale and unattended, getting…

As technology evolves and new generations arrive on the scene, it can be challenging to connect with your audience in the fresh ways that it desires and expects. Organizations often find that potential supporters and investors become less satisfied with the communications and options they’ve been offered over the years, and the risk of being…

What's the best email subject line? Easy: "Free pizza in the lunchroom." Somehow, that didn't make it into "The People's Choice: Best Subject Lines of 2015," a study by digital-marketing agency Informz. But there is a ton of killer info on the most effective and engaging subject lines nonprofits and associations used last year. The study analyzed keywords, patterns and trends in more than 80 million emails sent in 2015 as part of an A/B subject line test and 58 million emails that had open rates of more than 40 percent...

Oh yes, I get excited about marketing charts. I like when they break a myth and when they prove one. Here, I take a look at four marketing charts from MarketingSherpa that explore consumer's preferred communication channels, subject lines, promotional email frequency and communication thoughts by age agroup. What does the data tell us about nonprofit marketing?...

Time and time again, you’ve been asked to prove the effectiveness and ROI of your organization’s marketing efforts—especially when it comes to email marketing. And email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom, with a 3,800 percent ROI and $38 for every $1 spent. But email marketing’s reach goes way beyond ROI, which is…

The donor relationship equity built over the lifetime of an organization should not be taken lightly. Author Jeff Brooks encourages you to apply his proven strategies for raising more money and to avoid jarring tactics that jeopardize donor relationships. One of the passages we liked best in Brooks’s latest book, "A Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible…

Clearly, there are some major differences between political fundraising and other nonprofit fundraising (for starters, charities don't have the benefit of super PACs raising and spending unlimited sums of money on their behalf). But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from the way political fundraisers are using email. Here, we break down three of the big ones...

Recent data shows that "the pattern of retention for cash giving in the U.S. has worsened, with some organizations experiencing upwards of 70 percent attrition between the first and second gift." Your organization’s thank you letter is not the be-all, end-all to ending donor attrition. But it is an important first step in creating loyal, lifetime donors. Does yours have all 10 essentials?...

I don’t need to tell you that it’s a busy time of year. We have too many things to do and very little time to get it all done. We are all just running to keep up, so I thought I would have a little fun with my next topic and present 10 ways you can…