Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Persuade Or Convince?

In this ‘to the point’ post, marketer Seth Godin argues simply that: “Marketers don’t convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade.” As Godin observes, persuasion is about emotion and imagination. Convincing is about data and rationality. His conclusion: “If you’re spending a lot of your time trying to convince people, it’s no wonder it’s not working.” In […]

Learn More November 27, 2012

Minced Pie And Fundraisers

The memory came flooding back last week as I read Tom’s post on telemarketing … … I had just made what I felt was a mighty effective case for a major gift from the CEO of a major American company and was absolutely startled when he said “No, I won’t give!” Shocked, I asked him, […]

Learn More November 26, 2012

Make Popcorn For Thanksgiving

Agitator readers know how infatuated I am with online video as a tool for fundraising storytelling. Here’s a tool — Popcorn Maker — that could revolutionize how you tell tell stories online with video. In essence, Popcorn lets you take a video, then amplify its content with other pertinent content — photos, links to articles, […]

Learn More November 21, 2012

“Will You Puhleeeeze Take This Call?”

No mode of fundraising takes more hard knocks than telemarketing. If telemarketers haven’t ruined your exquisitely timed dinner, then you’ve probably at least read the horror stories where 99.9% of the funds raised go to the telemarketer. Roger keeps promising that he’ll write a post on the positive fundraising contribution of telemarketing. Maybe this guest […]

Learn More November 20, 2012

Big Data And Fundraising

Roger has written two post lately (here and here) noting the role that donor/consumer data and predictive modeling will play, and must play, in new donor acquisition … including for small nonprofits and charities. If you haven’t read those two posts yet, please do. They’re rather important to your fundraising future. If you need more […]

Learn More November 19, 2012

CRM … Meet MRM

No sooner do direct marketing fundraisers get the message that success involves building relationships — customer relationship marketing (CRM) — when along comes MRM … mobile relationship marketing! Here’s a good summary of mobile usage data from a variety of sources, compiled for the Chief Marketing Officer Council. A few factoids that struck me: 4% […]

Learn More November 16, 2012