Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Definitely Bold and Underline…or Not

It seems an article of faith that adding bold or underline in direct mail is best practice. Google it and some version of these points will surface many times over in the first few search result links. Bolding or underlining signals that a sentence is important. But underlining also serves a second, more important purpose. The […]

Learn More June 12, 2024

Transaction Costs Are A Killer

Not your transaction costs, the donor’s. Why does a mailing to a well curated list of folks garner such a low response rate? It’s only one of two reasons, A bunch of people on the mail list shouldn’t be – i.e. the list sucks reason The cost in time, convenience to give your mailing attention […]

Learn More June 10, 2024

The Evolution of Ken Burnett’s Vision

In the soft dawn of the early 1990s, Ken Burnett sat at a modest desk in the UK, his mind a whirlwind of thoughts about the future of fundraising. He was a man possessed by a vision. The vision would ultimately culminate in the first edition of Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-Based Approach to the Business […]

Learn More June 7, 2024

2,000 Birds or a Flock?

Humans often find it hard to appreciate the size of the problem and therefore, are often unwilling to donate more if there are 2,000 birds or humans vs. only 20. And we’re all familiar by now with the identifiable victim effect that can spike giving when sharing the story of a single person or bird, […]

Learn More June 5, 2024

Zero Party Is Still A Good Party

Zero-party data is voluntarily, willingly shared by constituents. First-party data is passively collected, it’s the footprint left from the interaction with your brand – website tracking data, open/click email data, donation data. First-party is more abundant but requires inference and assumption, zero-party is a much greater degree of knowing and understanding. There are three types […]

Learn More June 3, 2024

Throw the Direct Mail Down The Stairs

My father was a professor and would stay up all night (and sleep all day…) to grade tests. I often joked he should adopt the throw em’ down the stairs approach, higher grades to those that travel further. Many fundraising tests have pitted longer vs. shorter with the former winning. But “always” and “never” are […]

Learn More May 31, 2024