Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Email Deliverability Part 2: The Impact of Mad Libs Fundraising

Let’s play Mad Libs to illustrate why many email appeals have a deliverability — and performance — problem. We will need: An urgency phrase, like “Act now”, “Ends at midnight”, “Last chance”, “The clock is ticking”, “Deadline”, etc A whole number between 2 to 5 inclusive A reference to what happens at New Year’s, like “the […]

Learn More January 14, 2019

Email Deliverability Part 1: Some Basics

If your Board, CEO or colleagues ask, “What’s the size of our email list?” they’re asking absolutely the wrong question. The question they—and you—should be asking is What’s the Level of Engagement of our email list?” If that “open rate” on your year-end email was 25% is it because 75% of the folks weren’t engaged […]

Learn More January 11, 2019

Poor Year-End Giving: Reasons or Excuses?

It’s clear from the moaning and groaning reaching our Agitator ears that, for many, year-end giving fell short of expectations and projections. Just how much off the mark? Results vary but overall the shortfall may be as much as 25% for some organizations. For others there was no shortfall, and, in fact, 2018 year-end exceeded 2017 totals. […]

Learn More January 9, 2019

New Year, New Outlook

The fresh start effect means that now is a great time to take on new challenges or lean forward with a new outlook. One of mine for the new year is that we fundraisers are in the business of saving lives. Sure, we know that important missions would go unfunded without our fundraising. But I’m […]

Learn More January 7, 2019