Remember When?

I remember when people were in awe of email.  They loved it. Until they didn’t. The convenience –the ability to communicate directly and personally in writing regardless of time zones and free of telephone buzzy signals or answering machines and fax machines—was astounding. Unfortunately, that early awe of convenience and effectiveness has now morphed into […]

Fundraising And Dating

Badoo is a dating app with almost half a billion registered users worldwide and 300,000 new, daily sign ups.  But the dating app biz is  a crowded space with low barriers to trying other dating apps, low barriers to exit and  high promiscuity (had to, sorry). So, customer acquisition is only as good as their […]

Do You Use Personalized Matching In Your Fundraising?

Did either or both of these test ads beat the control?  No peeking. Neither test beat the control.  Or at least that’s the case if you assume everyone is the same and do a random nth test, which is 99% of all tests. How about this one, did either or both beat the control?  Go […]

Can You Persuade Donors?

Jack Trout was a TV ad man who helped pioneer the concept of brand positioning .  He famously quipped, “If your assignment is to change people’s minds, don’t accept the assignment.” Seems he knew what he was talking about.  A huge study of TV effectiveness on changing people’s attitudes and beliefs about social issues found […]

Do You Process Dots or Look for Patterns?

We report average gift as gospel.   And if the giving by your donors looks like the normal, bell curve on the left then average and standard deviation  (how tall or wide is the middle part) will have told you all you need to know.  This world view assumes the outliers are distraction.  How many times […]

Merry Christmas