Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Do You Close The Bathroom Door Even When You’re The Only Person Home?

With that question, as part of a personality quiz to prospective readers of the magazine Psychology Today, the late, great copywriter Bill Jayme dramatically increased the circulation of that magazine. The right question — those that get to the heart of consumer and donor attitudes — are not only key to acquisition, they’re even more […]

Learn More March 12, 2013

So What?

Good answers are impossible without good questions. And in the era of ‘big data’, integrated marketing, and CRM (by whatever name), knowing the right questions to ask is even tougher yet important to sort out, lest one become paralyzed by data. In her article in Fundraising Success — Are We Focused on the Wrong Metrics […]

Learn More March 11, 2013

Better Donor Communications, Or Creative Destruction?

Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now just ran this guest post — Why donors get jaded, and how you can stop it — from George Crankovic at TrueSense Marketing. George says too many nonprofits give the appearance of having an “insatiable appetite for money” and “will do anything to keep raising more and more of […]

Learn More March 8, 2013

Pioneering Champion Of Good Is Dead

Tom Collins, a pioneer of using database-driven technique to personally connect advertiser and customer, mentor, and well, an angel for all things good, is dead. The co-founder of the iconic direct response agency Rapp/Collins (now part of the Omnicom Group ) more than anyone else is responsible for the 1-to-1 marketing revolution. Stan Rapp, his […]

Learn More March 7, 2013

Declining Email Read Rates

Here’s another troublesome trend line to add to falling retention and acquisition rates — falling email read rates. A worldwide study by email services provider Return Path looked at 400,000 email campaigns conducted in the 4th Qtr of 2012 and compared them to the prior year. Some data points: Across all sectors, only 17% of […]

Learn More March 6, 2013

Boost Retention and Lifetime Value Big Time

Committed or loyal donors are made, not born. And since Tom and I have been banging away on the subject of retention, we thought it high time to offer up some specific, empirically proven practices and techniques for improvement. ‘Retention’ and ‘Lifetime Value’ are the fundamental vital signs for virtually every organization that relies on […]

Learn More March 5, 2013