Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Are You Donor-Obsessed or Merely Donor-Centric?

Customer experience guru Gerry McGovern warns that even if a company is indeed “customer-centric” that may not be enough these days. “To truly be successful, you need to nurture a customer obsession culture within your organization.”, he warns. The Agitator says, “Amen.” So, let’s kick ‘donor-centricity’ up a notch and focus on what makes for […]

Learn More March 5, 2018

The Value of an Email Address

Last week, we talked about advocacy as a way of building your file (and I was called out, correctly, for discounting the potential of paid advocate acquisition). So how much should you spend to get one email address? There’s new data from Steve MacLaughlin and Blackbaud (that you can get from his Data Driven Nonprofits […]

Learn More March 2, 2018

When metrics attack

If one acquisition mail package has a response rate of 1.1% and an average gift of $28, you’d pick that over another with a response rate of 1% and an average gift of $25, right? All other things being equal, of course you would. That’s the trap – all other things are seldom equal. Let’s […]

Learn More March 1, 2018

The Complexity of Simplicity

The universe tends toward entropy, toward ever-increasing complexity. But you and I don’t need to be unindicted co-conspirators. We can fight for simple. Fighting for simple isn’t simple. Complexity is a tricky bastard. He will plead “it’s just one more” for every field in a form, every message in a communication, every step in a […]

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A Little Hair of the Dog

You’ve heard me talking about knowing your donors’ identity or identities. One of the classic examples is cat people versus dog people: it’s simple, there are two options, and you can see how messaging would be different for each group. But it took a for-profit to give an interesting example of a next logical step […]

Learn More February 28, 2018

Avoid the Cringe-Inducing Moment of Calling a Deceased Donor

Today we’re adding TrueDeceased to The Agitator Toolbox. This easy-to-use tool enables you to go online and quickly—and without charge – get an overview of who on your database is deceased. When The Agitator first announced our Data Liberation Crusade and asked what low-cost data services were needed, reader Ann Kensek told us, “My Data Dream would include a database […]

Learn More February 27, 2018