Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Segmenting “Cost To Acquire” Using Identity

A couple months ago, I argued that cost to acquire (CTA) was one of only two metrics that matter in a deep, comprehensive way. (The other one, for those who like spoilers, was donor lifetime value.) And yet, CTA can lie. If one acquisition mail package has a response rate of 1.1% and an average […]

Learn More March 22, 2018

How Donors Choose Among Nonprofits: The Role of Identity

There’s an old joke at the right that often feels like nonprofit marketing. While we do and should have ambitions of expanding the charitable giving pie, we also want to secure our own organization’s piece of said pie. One of the points Kevin made yesterday is that organizations are differentiating themselves by creating donor journeys […]

Learn More March 21, 2018

Low Risk Approach to High Reward Discovery

Yesterday Roger outlined the failings of alleged-segmentation systems that aren’t customized to your organization. Today, I’d like to suggest a proven, low-risk approach to dramatic improvement through better segmentation. It’s hard to get away from the significant advantages that come with being a mature nonprofit brand: you can get very good at delivery, incremental efficiency, […]

Learn More March 20, 2018

Fantasyland Fundraising

Grandma Craver always advised: “Never wake a sleeping snake to kill it.” And generally, I try to follow her advice. But, over the weekend The New York Times ran a blockbuster of a piece How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions. Behind the story is the tale of a voter profiling firm named […]

Learn More March 19, 2018

The Taxman Cometh, Part 3: A Way Forward

We’ve discussed the nonprofit tax debate over the past two days; now it’s time to talk implications. There are a few roads that lead from here, all with their pluses and minuses. Ignore the new rules. Do what you’ve been doing. Maybe people will still think their gift helps them on their taxes, even if […]

Learn More March 16, 2018

Teaching your elephant to dance – Delivery and Discovery

There are significant advantages to being a mature nonprofit brand. You can get very good at delivery, incremental efficiency, and volume. Delivery is about exploiting what we know to get something close to what we expect; it is the origin of efficiency. After all, if you know next year’s acquisition package is going to look […]

Learn More March 15, 2018