Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Checklist Heaven

Direct marketing guru Denny Hatch was so enthralled with The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande that he updated his own direct marketer’s checklist. Denny’s checklist is 58 items long, so it’s pretty comprehensive. For example, here’s #2: Does your copy contain some or all of the 13 most powerful and evocative words in the English […]

Learn More March 3, 2010

Social Media And Event Fundraising

Here is a "must read" report from Blackbaud and Charity Dynamics: Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools. The two firms looked at 1750 events with nearly one million participants to answer these questions: Do integrated Facebook® tools help make event participants more successful online fundraisers? Is Twitter® an effective fundraising solicitation tool […]

Learn More March 2, 2010

A Reminder About Offer Testing

Here’s a brief article from the McKinsey Quarterly on "behavioral economics" … or why people make certain spending decisions and how they approach them. Each of the four principles/examples given relates to how a product is presented or priced in a retail context: 1. Make a product’s cost less painful. 2. Harness the power of […]

Learn More March 1, 2010

Definitive Study On Millennials

If you are trying to figure out Millennials (the 18-29 year old generation), here from Pew Research is the study you’ve been waiting for. The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change looks at Millennials across all dimensions — lifestyle, technology use, social and political attitudes — often including comparisons to older generations. The study is […]

Learn More February 26, 2010

Nonprofit Video Tips

Yesterday’s Agitator post raised the issue of combining direct mail and online video for fundraising purposes. And a few readers shared their experiences via Comments. Check them out. Then, coincidentally, today arrives this article from nonprofit marketing consultant Nancy Schwartz offering nine tips for nonprofits interested in producing videos. If you’ve done video production already, […]

Learn More February 25, 2010

Online Video Inspiration from Tufts

The NY Times had an interesting article yesterday on how Tufts University was inviting applicants for admission to submit YouTube videos as part of their applications. Great idea! While enterprising students have been sending videos with their applications for some time at their own initiative, it appears Tufts is the first school to incorporate online […]

Learn More February 24, 2010