Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Best U.S. Political Ad Of 2016

Agitator readers in the U.S. have been inundated with political ads of all kinds. An estimated $4.4 billion in TV spending alone. Up from $3.8 billion in 2012. Enough is enough. “Too much”, as Grandma Craver used to say, “will make a dog sick.” Sadly, most fail the basic test of informing viewers on the […]

Learn More October 28, 2016

Running the numbers on retention for fun and profit

On Tuesday, our friends at the Agitator exposed the innumeracy of some when it comes to calculating retention and covered how to calculate it. That’s a good first step toward benchmarking your retention numbers. And I have to confess that I have seen such fuzzy retention math even in the hallowed halls of learned conferences. One […]

Learn More October 27, 2016

Your Brain On Email

Roger’s been touting neuroscience lately and the application of what we know about how the brain processes stuff to produce sounder marketing/fundraising. Here’s an example of ‘Neuromarketing 101’ I recently came across. I commend this useful compilation of effective email marketing approaches based on neuroscience principles, put together by Emma, a pretty slick email marketing firm […]

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The Curse of Testing Illiteracy

Spurred on by my post The Curse of Fundraising Innumeracy, reader Mikaela King over at the National Geographic Society decided to “dog pile” on with what she termed “another illiteracy” in our sector — testing illiteracy. Mikaela noted, “A lack of discipline in conducting accurate A/B split testing, truly ensuring randomized segments, making sure your test segments are large […]

Learn More October 26, 2016

The Curse of Fundraising Innumeracy

Lots of good stuff apparently came out of last week’s International Fundraising Conference and we’ll be reporting on some of that in the near future. But … mixed in with the emails and phone calls reporting the ‘good’ came one message that deserves immediate attention because I suspect it’s far from a lone example. “Roger, […]

Learn More October 25, 2016

Doing Your Best Work

You’re probably reading this on Monday morning. Are you going to do your best work this week? Indeed, what motivates you to do your best work? A deadline, prospect of recognition by peers or superiors, fear of failure, the thrill of creating something new, the goal itself (personal or institutional), team élan, something much deeper […]

Learn More October 24, 2016