Award Winning Blog - Agitator

What’s Your EMI Score? And Why It Should Matter to Your Brand

A new study in Nature Human Behaviour analyzed 145 years of U.S. congressional speeches using a linguistic framework called the EMI score, short for Evidence Minus Intuition. Here’s the premise: Language exists on a continuum between two rhetorical styles: Evidence-based: Words like fact, data, proof, reason, research, statistics Intuition-based: Words like feel, believe, opinion, gut, […]

Learn More June 11, 2025

The $30 Copy Change: How Personality-Tuned Messaging Pays

A new study adds to what we’ve been saying and likely rings intuitively true: Tailored messages work better. In four large-scale experiments with nearly 1,800 people, researchers tested tailoring messages in three different ways to match a person’s: Personality Moral values Political ideology They tested matched vs. mismatched and matched vs. generic. In all cases, […]

Learn More June 9, 2025

Stop Yelling. Start Persuading.

There comes a point when the inbox on my laptop and the messages app on my iPhone simply can’t take it anymore. I hit that point somewhere around the fifth email and 3rd SMS this morning. They screamed: “MIDNIGHT DEADLINE!” “Your $3 gift will be 7X MATCHED!” “If you don’t act now, democracy will surely […]

Learn More June 6, 2025

From Flat to Fired Up: Personalize Your Appeals with Psychological Precision

Most fundraisers still segment by age, income, or giving history. It’s better than nothing—but just barely. Everyone gets the same message. Same tone. Same appeal. And we cross our fingers and hope it lands. Which question would you rather be answering as a fundraiser, which one is likely to matter more to the reader? Who […]

Learn More June 4, 2025

Ring the Bell, Not Your Hands

In times like these, it’s easy—fashionable, even—to believe that doom is a foregone conclusion. That democracy is circling the drain. That artificial intelligence will eat our jobs, our meaning, our minds. That cruelty is ascendant and civic life has cracked. But despair is lazy. Worse—it’s contagious. It spreads faster than hope and sticks longer than […]

Learn More May 30, 2025

The Thermofax Gospel of Recurring Giving

Let me tell you a story. It’s May 24, 1815. Some well-meaning folks in a fledgling nation decided they could collect money on a regular basis. For charity. Subscription-style. Recurring generosity. Monthly giving. They got it right two hundred and ten years ago. Now jump to the present day, where most nonprofit boards still stare […]

Learn More May 27, 2025